Hollins University - Spinster Yearbook (Roanoke, VA)

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Mlss MATTY L. COCKE, President

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qr fwfr-ae sm ste A OF Nmeteew Tmarv-Two IE' g,4Pl:1,-Ji,-fn-fx.-fn-Al.-flP-fl-f-1tg1f-1tt1f1tt-4ff-1ltfefirf-fJzE,1m5-sr?12r' EQ E 32.51r-'lr-fflr-IlT-itrib-'lrf'li:.fje:'.lHEP!f-Jlr-elf-Itmilf-ftejlr-flr-6155135-iIEiIsE'.m Columns OVV SHALL we measure in the years to come the impress made upon our spirits by the beauty of the colonnades and columns of Hollins? With what emotion recollected in tranquillity shall we not conjure up the visions our minds have stored of the Library portico, as night has fallen upon day, and autumn and winter yielded place to spring? How often have we glanced at the columns gleaming white beneath the translucent blue of an October sky, or shimmering in the soft haze of a late April twilight, or towering loftily toward a windy moon sailing through magic clouds? Is it too vain a fancy, one wonders, to find in these colonnades and columns, in the spirit of the very brick and mortar of our physical Hollins, a symbol of our kinship with the Greeks? Perhaps we are vain, and in this very effort deny our kinship with that most clear-seeing race who gazed fearlessly at truth and recorded frankly what they saw. But they, least of all, who took-perfec- tion for their aim, would condemn us for our high endeavor, and in the ideal that Hollins holds before us, however far we may fall short, we can assert our spiritual descent from them. In the external world, beauties of mountain and meadow, Woodland and stream, so familiar, so loved that-they became incarnate in fair, sentient forms, in the world of men, individual worth and mutual dependence so recognized that harmony, musical living, became the goal, in the world of a man's own life, the same harmony, balance of development in mind and body, so appreciated that perfect symmetry became the ideal not only of Phidias but of Aristotle as well-this was the Greek life at its highest. Dare We not say that we strive to follow with fair footing these highroads? Are not the beauties of our mountains and our streams, of our upland meadows, our Forest of Arden and our willows, in their infinite variety, so endeared to us that sometimes, in a fleeting moment, we, too, have caught a vision of a nymph's hair flying in the breeze, or heard the distant tinkle of a naiad's laugh? VVhat fair thoughts and forms have not come into our minds as we have swung our feet, sitting on the wall of the little cemetery, or as we have lain, tranquil, disembodied spirits, in the sun on an overhanging cliff of Tinker? In our community, our little world of men, whatever means we use, to whatever obligations we may bow, has not our goal been musical living -mutual dependence and mutual responsibility making their appeal to our innate desire for rhythm and harmony? Balance in labor and leisure, in mental, and physical, and spiritual activity-this, though we may falter, is our ideal for our small world. And for our individual lives the same symmetry, attained more perfectly in some than in others, but most fully by those who interpret best the spirit of Hollins. These have discovered not only the gods of woodland and meadow, but have gazed far into the clear eyes of Athena, these have seen the pure loveliness of intellectual attainment, and have come in some measure to understand and experience, be it from afar, the beauty of wisdom. 'l heir prayer has been the prayer of Socrates as he stood under a plane tree on the slopes of the soft flowing Ilissus: f'Dear Pan and other gods who may be here, grant that I may grow beautiful within, May what I have with what I am be friendly. May I count the wise man rich, and let my store of gold be such as only a sober man coulcl take as his spoil. This is the spirit of Hollins, this the beauty that its columns symbolize. HM' M fi Makouaarrs C. HEARSEY. Us a y allure I

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Miss MARY WILLIAMSON, Dean