Holbrook High School - Echo Yearbook (Holbrook, MA)

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THE ECHO 15 enough to pay him well. He said to me, in joke, knowing my rheuma- tism, ‘If you hadn’t a bog of your own, Mrs. Spears, I should be happy to make you a present of all you’d pick!’ “Now I’ll write a line to him, say- ing you are my substitute. Hand me my glasses, Betty. What a provi- dential thing you came in, as I said ! It makes me so happy to be able to help a little, now and then!” The bewildered guest meekly handed her the glasses, and with a conscience happily at rest, Mrs. Speers applied herself to the com- position of her letter to the deacon. RUTH HAUSER, ’27. The Mysterious Bag It was a dark, foggy night and I was returning from the movies. To reach home quicker, I took a short cut through an alley. I had gone about half way when I saw a man, who was carrying a bag on his shoulder, come out of one of the houses. I grew suspicious and de- cided to follow him. He shifted his burden from shoulder to shoulder as if the baer were of great weight. Suddenly I heard a cry like that of a baby come from the sack. This aroused my suspicions more than ever. The man was rapidly approach- ing the bridge which overhung a large river. He was just about to pitch the bag over the railing when I said, “Halt!” The man ran, leaving the bag be- hind. I ran over to the bag, untied the cord, and to my surprise, out came an old cat with her seven kit- tens. They started off in the di- rection of the house from which the man had come. JULES WALDMAN, ’28. THE FARM OF THE FUTURE In 2941 — “The world is certainly changed,” remarked some angels who were gazing down from the heavens, “since 1924.” Indeed it had. Buildings towered, miles high. The sun could not reach the streets, so artificial sunshine cast its rays from buildings and posts. Hardly a clear spot could be seen in all the world. Land was valued so high an ordinary man could not buy a square foot. The government reserved an acre here and there to help feed the people if connections with other planets were broken. I suppose you wonder how they built new houses; instead of buying land, they bought the top of another house and built theirs above. Fire was a thing of the past so nothing was de- stroyed by fire. A farm was a rare sight and what was considered a farm we would not recognize. Plants had been changed so as to yield more. Vegetables of all kinds grew on trees. Orchards of tomatoes, onions, beets, and with rare vegetables growing underneath were often found on a farm. The farms in many places were similar to the rest of the world, that is, in layers. By means of boxes and posts, food-stuffs were grown on top of each other. The rich soil used in layer farming was imported from other planets. Giant air-crafts were used for carrying things between planets. The few farms could hardly feed the people on our world. Canned goods, green vegetables, fruits and meats were imported from the stars. Milk, of the creamiest and best va- riety ever known, was transported from the Milky Way to help feed the many people. Thousands of pounds of butter and cheese were imported from the moon daily. Furthermore, the universe was so civilized it never had wars or anv such things. Peace reigned. ETHEL MAYERS, ’26.

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14 THE ECHO a blessed opportunity to give it where it would do good. “Well, then, you know how des- titute the Saunders family were left; everything burned, while they were at church two weeks ago. The minute I heard of it, I began to cast about in my mind who would be likely to have clothes to fit those poor folks. “I knew Mrs. Saunders was about my size, and Squire Rawlin’s house- keeper is my size, too; that seemed a real leading! So I sat right down and wrote her, saying I felt sure she would be glad to help a family in distress and that halfworn gar- ments would be perfectly suitable. She sent me back a note saying she had just packed all her available dresses to go to a Western cousin, and that there “must be others ’ who could help fit out Mrs. Saunders. It was a polite enough note but showed plain enough that she wasn’t sen- sible of the chance I’d given her, right at home. “Then there was that poor one- armed man that my brother Sam sent over here, saying what a good worker he was, and how much he could do with his one arm. “I bethought me at once of the Sprague sisters; perfectly able to hire help, and with no man belong- ing to them. It seemed as if they’d be filled with gratitude at such a chance. I sent the man right to them. But I heard that all they did was to give him supper and break- fast, and let him sleep in the shed over night, just because they’d made some sort of a promise to Tommy Jennings to let him do the odd work to earn money to pay his way at the academy. “I wrote to brother Sam just how it was, but I had a kind of “hurt” letter from him, saying the man had come back, and he had found work for him as he was disappointed in Brookby. I think Sam feels just as I do about the folks here, though he never says anything. He’s an awful quick man to take up a good work, and I think it makes him feel bad to come here. “He hasn’t visited me for five years now. The last time he came he was getting up a subscription for the soldiers’ monument in Slow- town; he talked with me about it, knowing I’d be interested, as George and Fred both went from Slowtown to the war. He said that he didn’t know but there’d be somebody in Brookby that would feel to give a little something to the fund. “I remember just how he sat, looking out of the window, as he said it. He seemed sort of sad. So I cast around in my mind, and at last I though of Ann Crawley. And I said: “Sam, I don’t know for sure, but Ann Crawley might subscribe some- thing if you went over to the farm. You know she was engaged to a Slowtown young man that was killed in the war. To be sure, I said as a kind of caution; she has grown a little near of late years; but her heart might be opened and her purse strings loosened for such an object,” I said. “Sam waited a minute, and then he turned round, and gave a sigh, and said he, “I guess I won’t go so far on an uncertainty.” That was all he said, and that’s the last time I saw him.” Mrs. Spears paused to inspect her sewing and Miss Warner opened her lips, and straightened the pail on her knees. “How are your cranberries this year?” she asked timidly. “There, said Mrs. Spears, with a smile of great benevolence ; “when I saw that pail, I said to myself T know Betty Warner is after cran- berries’. And it does seem a real Providence that you came to me, for I know just where to send you. Deacon Brown’s big bog has yielded beyond all hopes this year; and to- morrow the pickers are to begin work. He told me there’d be

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16 THE ECHO Visions Fate surely had taken a strange turn ; here I was on an Atlantic bound vessel, the largest in the world, the “Leviathan,” bound for some unknown port on the other side of this vast globe. Strange to say, this peculiar state of affairs necessitated no explana- tion, and I with the experienced eye of the exacting traveller, noted ev- ery detail of the huge liner’s con- struction. I say experienced eye, because, had I not just left Niagara Falls on my way from Yellow Stone Park? Was there not just a month’s difference from the time I left Miami, Florida, to the time I left St. Johns, New Brunswick? Time surely had, so to say, evap- orated, and here I was, again I re- peat it, I, little insignificant I, aboard the vessel which only two short years before, I had fought with the angry mob to view from the exterior. Majestically we rode the waves, it seemed at times as though we floated through the air, so peaceful was the voyage, until at last, just as the Em- erald Isle crept over the horizon, what I had always dreaded occurred. I began to get seasick, a peculiar feeling located itself at about the center of my anatomy, the sea gulls began to shriek shrilly, rasping on my ears, while the people’s voices which had, up ’till now, seemed com- panionable, roused my impatience to such a degree that I sat up in my camp chair and was about to depart in high dudgeon to my stateroom when strong arms suppressed me, a soothing voice assured me that ev- erything would be all right, and I opened my eyes to see the dentist proudly exhibiting what was once my affected tooth. LILLIAN LAKEWITZ, ’26. Jack’s New Radio I will tell you how it happened. Jack had worked hard from the time he got home from school until eleven and twelve o’clock at night trying to make a radio. His father had made many of them and w?s willing to help him but Jack would not accept any assistance. After getting it all put together he tuned in but could not get a sound out of it. Discouraged but still determined to win he took it all apart. At last he got it fixed and sat up that night until three o’clock listening to a con- cert in New York. The next night he invited a few of his friends in to listen to a concert in Washington. He proudly walked up to the radio, threw back the cloth covering and stood there a minute to give them a chance to praise him for his clever work. He then tuned in. Everybody was silent as a mouse. Not a sound came from the radio. Again and again he tried. Still no response. Muttering something about needing a new “B” battery he ran from the room returning in- stantly with another one. After ad- justing this he again tuned in. All kinds of screeching, scratching, howling and buzzing sounds issued for about ten minutes. Then a voice said, “This is station WNAC, Wash- ington, President Calvin Coolidge announcing. The next number on the program will be Madame Brown at the Piano playing ‘It’s a Long, Long way to Tipperary.’ Again those unearthly sounds came from the radio. Everyone laughed heart- ily. Angry Tack rushed across the room, pulled away the screen that stood in back of the radio, and there stood Jack’s chum Bob grin- ning from ear to ear. Taking him by the shoulder Jack led him across the room, pushed him out on the piazza, and slammed the door. He