Iowa State University - Bomb Yearbook (Ames, IA)

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,Many of the Beautiful Thoughts OF DOCTOR BEARDSHEAR HAVE BEEN LEFT IN UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS. THE BOMB PRESENTS THE FOLLOWING FROM HIS PEN, FEELING THAT THEY CAN BEST BE APPRE- CIATED BY THOSE WHO HAVE COME UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF HIS MASTER-MIIxD THEITWO I'S OF YOURSELF. WHAT a Heaven's wide flung palace gate was the parlor of the old childhood homestead! It had the scent of a holy shut-inness from being open chiefly on Sundays. As a retreat in the mountains to wild things, it beshuttered, gave a boy a week day seclusion. Its hair mattressed settee was as soothing to a boy's bare feet on a summer day as a mother's hand to a fevered brow when the day becomes tired. The biggest mirror that ever hung in the world graced that parlor with a God-Almighty's face. One day when the hours were tired, a bare-foot boy lay upon that settee, afront of that God-Almighty's face measuring souls. The soul of him fell into the balances of the face. Who is that boy- in the mirror? I am that Ig that I is I. The I is called - . What is this I? What are Emi and Elim? Oh, to be a barefoot boy upon that settee again! It isn't long enough now. The fir trees near the windows like Thomas Hood's seemed close against the sky. It is no pleasure to find one's self farther off from heaven than when a boy. The years have enfilled that I with many. If the night has a thousand eyes and the day but one, the soul has a thousand and seventy times seven. TWO THOUGHTS OF THE NIGHT. ONE spring time when the flowers were belated and the crops tardy, for a full week the sun had not shown and the husbandman complained of the backward spring. The roads were lead and refused their purple to the eye. Days of continuous cloud tied the body fast in on the soul when the day was done and the darkness of the night. Under foot in the mud and the cold a 'humble insect of God lit a light. The passerby stopped out-right. He had been somewhat blue, andthat tiny insect threw out more light of cheer into the blackest night of the Week than man or sun had done. He said to himself, This light is more appreciable than that of the sun for six whole days. A star in its glory never did better in his degree than this.', And he went his way reconciled. On a dark, stormy night of another year in the lull of the storm on the bank of an old stream way, a man sat down to listen to the brook and the night. His face was between his hands and his eyes to the earth. When the stars do not shine the gloom of the clouds is easiest back of the head, so he was sheltering his soul from the shadows of the storm. But down through the muddy, murky grass and weeds sprang a light. Naturalists say it is a love light of an insect. The increase of the light drove out the darkness. 17

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men who saw him but once carried away a vivid impression of a strong, virile personality. Association only deepened the impression of strength, which, though a man of strong feelings, he did not weaken by losing self control, even under great provocation. His moral and intellectual strength were equal to his physical, and his integrity was beyond question. He was an optimist, and there is something in human nature which responds instinctively to him whose courage and confidence in the good never fail. He was also a poet, and here again human nature yields instinctive deference to the soul ahre with nature's inspirations. He was a growing man, not bigoted or narrow, whose ideals were constantly developing. He was a well balanced and well rounded man, in whose judgment all could confide. These qualities all added to the strength of his influence, but I am only voicing what many have thought when I say that the great secret of his remarkable powervvith students was the magnanimity of soul and sincerity of sympathy which made him treat all as fellow men and women, whom it would be a great privilege to him to aid toward true manhood and womanhood. Thus his influence was effective not only with the weak, but even more with the strong students of the college. Doctor Beardshear's' death was so sudden and has been so recent that it is still impossible to form a just estimate of the full extent of his influence upon our State Col- lege. It has already been said that he was a man whose ideals were constantly growing and developing, but for four years before his death he had in mind the general features of an ideal for our college, better and grander, it seems to the writer, than any other ideal yet formed for such institutions. This ideal was such a one as would permit the college to grow and work in perfect harmony with the State University and all other state schools, and in the last years of his life he did much to help the University and the Normal School secure the appropriations needed for their growth. Moreover this idea was such as to harmonize all departments of the college into one homogenous but broad and well rounded whole. - This ideal is that our State College is to become a great technical school, which shall train not only the heads and hands, but also the hearts of its students, so that they shall become worthy to be the trusted leaders of our country in the myriad technical interests of modern civilization, and which shall be more intimately in touch with all the agricultural and other industrial and technical interests of the state than has been true of any other educa- tional institution. He saw the Iowa State College as the acknowledged leader and co-worker of all the agricultural, the mining, the manufacturing, the transportation, the engineering and the labor interests of Iowa. Under his Wise guidance the first step in carrying out this ideal was the construction of our new Engineering Hall, a step made with the heartiest co-operation and the most cor- dial support of our Agricultural Department and its friends. The next step, to enable which to be successfully made he literally sacrificed his life,1was to provide similar homes for our Agricultural department and our general departments. In this the Engineering Departments will C0-Operate in every way in their power. Later Domestic Science and Veterinary Medi- cine and athletic training and the general culturetraining necessary for a well rounded tech- nical student must be provided for, and we all will work together in fulfilling his great ideal. Doctor Beardshear's influence is with us yet. Almost can we see that tall and well loved form come forth from his little ofiice near the close of the dayls work, with the overcoat thrown loosely over the broad shoulders. We can see him mingle with the teams practising on the athletic field. We can see him drinking in the inspirations of nature on our beautiful campus. By the virtue of his infiuence his great ideal shall yet be fulfilled. ANSON MARSTON. is

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A BOY AGAIN, JUST FOR A NIGHT, OR, THE SPIRIT OF MOTHERHOOD. MAN is a sheaf and the straws are moods. These are chaotic, epochal and formative. Once in a great while a man longs to be a boy again. The boyish instincts of all the years rebirth themselves in his soul. A cradle song co'mes back to him with the discovery that mother sang it for her own heart as well as his- H Backward, turn backward, oh time, in thy flightg Make me a child again, just for to-night I In such an epochal mood a child in his forties' and a mother in her seventies lived life over again, just for a night. It came about in this way: Duty and work had separated them hundreds of miles for years. The child in his forties had been summoned from afar to share the undescribable and ineffaceable last hours of the mother. Her absence from boyhood,s entrance gate had been intuitional of bad dreams coming true. The nurse had been dismissed for the night that the child might share the vigil and the care. There is something in the atmosphere of things between twelve and four of the night that blends both worlds and makes them somewhat intelligible to each other. At these hours the silence of earth makes hearable the voices of heaven. At this period it is not difficult to find good spirits abroad, and to dis- cover one's own soul out of the portal ways of the body to commune with these in a higher life. The child in his forties was homesick to lie upon that mother arm that first divided the lines between earth and Heaven: the arm that had soothed many a tired day with a solace of the night's restg the arm that had been strong and yet tender in the perplexing revelations of the mystery called a boyg the arm that had held him to the mother breast and the fountain of an elixir of life. The child-man longed to rest upon that arm and to be a boy again, just for a night. Back flooded the years and memories plentiful. Mother and child shared the holy abandon of true affection. They communed as of yore-the mother in her seventies and the child in his forties. She said, U When you were a babeI took you in my arms to an unused chamber upstairs, and placing you upon the bed, I kneeled in dedication of your life to What- ever province a good God might determine. I vowed you should go anywhere in the world that duty should call and I would not murmur. I prayed that you might be kept from harm and become useful. I have been wanting to tell you for years of my prayer, but never had courage enough in your presence before. I am so thankful I have lived to tell you. H My mother, said the boy, H the conhdence is an inspiration of Heaven, but you must not talk more now, your strength will not permit. You are to be the child to-night and I am to be the strong one to hold you and talk you to sleep as you did me in the days of the old trundle- bed lifeg so, please listen. H That old custom of a trundle-bed telescoped under the larger bed for the day had its poetry as well as its utility. What a comfortable structure for a child, with the corded ropes when new and without pockets of sags, but you always kept mine strung up tight and good. To call up in the night, after some fright of dream, 'lVIother, are you there ?,' was a prayer to heaven with love's immediate answer. In the ills and fears of the night, to have youicome down to that trundle-bed to soothe ailments of body and soul as real and great as any in all life, was a descent from the skies of a heaven-born messenger. It was an easier pathway to the Good Man in the skies who you said knew all about a boy, and could see him in the house as well as in the big road. As from the mart in South American countries one or two ,broad pathways face each point of the compass and distribute themselves over the plains and 1-8