Hobart Senior High School - Memories Yearbook (Hobart, IN)

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=£ Q= U a more practical and utilitarian ideals of the present — ideals demanding that character shall ever keep pace with culture, and stalwartly hold- ing that the producer, though arrayed in calico and corduroy, is more essential to the progress of the St ate and to the perpetuity of the Repub- lic than the mere consumer a-ride in automobile and private yacht and car and arrayed in purple and fine linen, and is worthy of greater respect and honor. By all means seek all the refinements and adornments of literary and scholastic culture but, first of all, qualify yourself to make an hon- est living. “Make first thy centre right, Then strike thv circles round.” £3 Ci

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Q 0 u 0 aday, hundred-cents-on-the-dollar democracy is, in some measure, a mis- fit. Were we a people who regarded manual labor and self-support a disgrace our curriculum would be ideal; but since we regard the non- laborer, the non-producer, a pest and a parasite, and since we buy edu- cation not for ornament, but to become better and more successful bread-winners, and home-makers, and citizens, practical and intelligent members of the body politic and of the body-cosmic, the taxpayer often feels lie’s defrauded and, consequently, is angry. The teacher’s task to-day is not unlike the turning back of Niagara — the most herculean task in the world. How to fit his wards to do unpoetical, unromantic, but absol utely indispensable handwork and headwork and inspire them with a passionate love of it and a sense of its glorious dignity in a community that is leisure-smitten and money- mad and rank-and-ti tie-mad— -in short, fit his wards to make an honest living by honest toil, to become producers and not parasites, to glory in thrift, industry, productivity— is the supreme problem of the hour. Maltlius taught that the earth is too poor to support its population —is overstocked. He was mistaken; the earth is rich to opulency. We’ve scarce begun to tap earth’s inexhaustible resources. The prob- lem is: How to train the rising generation to lay to and avail them- selves of earth’s riches in oil, soil, steel, lead, iron, tin, copper, zinc, metals and minerals, timber and waterpower; to betake themselves to farming, mining, merchandising, manufacturing, teaching, the army and the navy, the indispensable trades requiring skill and others requir- ing technical training and yet others in the domain of science, phar- macy, electrical engineering, etc.; to revere and hallow all honest toil and toilers; to extol honest hardworking poverty and to scorn dis- honest or extortionate wealth; to uncover before and “All hail” the producer and to blast with withering opprobrium the parasite. How to humanize and democratize our Public School and College education and turn it into the great gulf-stream of our practical, pas- sionate, debt-hating, loafer-loathing, labor-demanding, agricultural, in- dustrial and commercial daily life, making every sane, able-bodied citi- zen self-sustaining, helpful to others, devoted to his country and its insti- tutions, loyal to his Maker — broadly and fundamentally patriotic and religious; what a work! The end and aim of all education, vocational no less than cultural, is character, but there’s no stable, praiseworthy character apart from self-denial, self-sacrifice, and service; and the greater the service ren- dered, requiring sorest labor, self-denial, and self-sacrifice, the more noble and exalted the character acquired. The Mechanic of Nazareth is the supreme Example. Nor will the ardent, eager, scholarly, patriotic, devout teachers in oui American Public Schools fall short of their heroic, nerve-racking, sometimes heart-breaking, but all glorious task; to fit and fuse all that is ideal in the old curricula and methods of the past to and with the 17 r fJ Q a Q 7=

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THE DAWN. |N THE quiet of the morning twilight, a young girl followed a winding path through a woodland where the leaves were yet a pale green. Beside the way a fallen tree trunk, over- grown with gray lichens and scarlet fungi, sheltered a bed of yellow violets just opening their first buds. Farther on she paused and leaned over the edge of a placid pool. She dropped pebbles into the shadowy depths and watched the widening ripples sway the slender green blades on the opposite shallow margin. She listened a moment to the song of the rivulet which led away over a flat white rock, over smooth round stones and yellow sand. The path led to the very top of a hill where a twisted apple tree held out low sweeping branches and filled the air with sweetness from its white-pink blossoms. She pushed aside the fragrant clusters, swung herself up on a low bough and leaned against the trunk of the tree. Before her was the river, indistinct through the hovering mists, and all the land seemed sleeping. As she watched, the first gleams of dawn barred the sky with silver. Suddenly the mists dissolved and the sky glowed with shimmering shafts of pale mauve and gold blended with rose and green. The iridescent tints flamed into Oriental crimsons, burned for an instant and then slowly softened as the sun, a huge golden bubble, floated above the horizon. “O, you pink-white apple blossoms! Did you see, too? We share the joy of beginnings,— the dawn of the day, the freshness of spring, fhe awakening of life. The sunsets are glorious, and the moonlight is full of sweet dreams, but this — this is the ecstasy of living! Little apple blossoms, is this not God’s promise of a sweet renewal of life — an endless, more abundant life?” RUTH S. THOMPSON. 19