Ipswich High School - Tiger Yearbook (Ipswich, MA)

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that our government has been governed by self made men who have risen to high positions through struggling against many difficulties. Their own efforts trained them for great and good service and well qualified them to rule our nation. Grant, Lincoln, and Roose- velt are among those who have gained through hard work the highest posi- tion which this country has to offer. We all know the struggles of Lincoln during his early life and during the Civil War. Grant was made President as a reward for his war services. He was a military genius and did a great deal toward the success of the North- ern cause. While he was in command of all the Union forces, his soldiers were stimulated by his energy. His success in battle was due to the fact that he kept struggling, apparently los- ing, but in reality gaining inch by inch, and never letting up on Lee’s army. The struggles and success of Roosevelt are all well known to us also. He him- self said that his “success was not due to any special gift or genius, but to patience and laborious persistence.” Other great men have also gained success through struggling. Edison, one of the greatest of American iiiv en- tors, was, at the age of twelve, a news- boy. He studied in all his spare time and experimented with electricity. He was alw’ays struggling and many times worked far into the night. We, also, shall be successful if we do not let ourselves be discouraged at the thought of hard work. Never have so many opportunities been offered. We have many opportunities for education and preparation which will fit us for whatever we want to do. If we but use these, we are bound to accomplish what we planned to, and we shall be rewarded with the satisfaction that comes from knowledge of a task well done. We must be willing, however, to per- severe in our efforts and to sacrifice some pleasures. Think of the sacrifices great men and women have made. Many of them were willing to sacrifice even their lives, to accomplish what they had set out to do. We may not be called upon to sacrifice our lives, but we must be willing to sacrifice some pleas- ures in return for the things most worth while in life. Others have felt that there was n o sacrifice too great for the prize they were seeking. There is success in everything if we are only willing to work for it. Those who are the poorest may gain the most fame and success. Their efforts will overcome all obstacles. For them dif- ficulties will only become the occasion for greater struggling. The way to success for us, the class of 1926 , may be made easier and shorter by having a single ,strong aim and by struggling and struggling hard, keeping ever in mind that there is no prize without a struggle. “Palma non Sine Pulvere.” Hazel Manzer. THE VALUE OF THE STUDY OF MUSIC A comparison of the origin of music with that of other arts such as archi- tecture, sculpture, and poetry shows that the latter have a definite begin- ning wdiereas the source of music is not certain. Passing rapidly over the history of music, we learn that the ear- liest musiq was without doubt vocal, and the rhythmical element in music soon led to the invention of the drum, tam- bour, and castanets by the primitive man. Next came the invention of cer- 31

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thing worth infinitely more than any- thing that can be reckoned in terms of money values that constitutes his re- turn for the cost of his education. We have seen then whether we con- sider the cost of education from the point of view of the town or of the pupil, that no matter how great the cost may be, it is always exceeded by the return in both money and satisfac- tion. We can make no better invest- ment. Let us not begrudge, therefore, any money, time, or effort that we can spend in behalf of this great cause of education. Earl Ewing. “PALMA NON SINE PULVERE” “Palma non Sine Pulvere,” no prize without a struggle, is our class motto. Everybody realizes the truth of this motto, but we need to be reminded of it frequently in these days of ease when people are apt to forget that the only things in life worth having are those worth striving for. There seems to be a regrettable tendency even among some modern educators to believe that everything must be made pleasant and interesting for pupils in school and to discard those subjects which they regard as merely disciplinary, such as Latin, Greek, literature, and others. For the few who fail to recognize their own indebtedness to these studies, however, there are countless others who, in the broader culture and ideal- ism they have obtained, realize that they possess treasures all too rare in this age and country of material wor- shippers and of commercialism. They have not forgotten, however, the period of drudgery which they passed through before the glories of an ancient or even a modern literature dawned upon them. So it is in ev ery field of life where there is anything to be accomplished. Mo.it musicians can doubtless look back to days when they drummed out uninter- esting scales for hours at a time. Suc- cessful authors, most of them at least, have experienced a discouraging pe- riod of training and very often failures. Such examples might be multiplied indefinitely, but let us pass on to ob- serve examples in the history of our country as a whole where success was attained only through a struggle. First, we have the Pilgrims who came here for religious and political freedom. They had many struggles to contend with, — those with the Indians, those against disease, a nd those for food. Their task was not easy, but in the midst of hardships which, for us, would be unendurable, they never lost sight of their purpose and attained it for themselves and for posterity. Second, we have the Revolutionary War in which we struggled for the peace and safety of our country. We had been deprived of the rights which had been promised us in our charters, and those rights were deemed worth all the strug- gle of the disheartening days of the war. Third, we have the example or the Civil War in which there was a struggle for the preservation of the Union and out of which came a glorious and indissoluble nation. For the fourth example, we have the more recent World War. On the outcome of this, the democracy of the whole world depended. These were all bitter strug- gles, but in the end we were rewarded with success. All men who have gained national or public distinction have done so through their own efforts. We can truly say 30

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tain wind instruments, probably sug- gested by sounds in nature or by blow- ing on the horn of some animal. These instruments were the flute, Pan’s pipe, and the horn. The Greeks were the first people to honor music as one of the highest arts, and under them for the first time in history music attained a complete artis- tic development. The early church music was for the most part borrowed from the East. The first attempts at harmony were made in the ninth cen- tury. At the opening of the seven- teenth century there was a revolution in music, in which century the genius tended to expansion and discovery. The rise of the opera and orchestra gave a new outlook to the whole world of music, and although their progress in development was slow, they are today the highest types of music we have. Music has a three fold value. In the first place, it has cultural value. A knowledge of music aids in the appre- ciation of good literature. It adds to a person’s enjoyment of poetry. The ear trained to appreciate music will more readily detect the musical qual- ities and rich melody of such poetry as Tennyson’s and Shelley’s, and will even detect, to a lesser degree per- haps, the same qualities in the many fine examples of melodious prose which we have in the hands of the great mas- ters of English. The resemblance be- comes even more marked when we recol- lect that the same vocabulary is used to define essentials in both a literary and a musical composition. We use the terms melody, harmony, variety, and symmetry interchangeably in the two arts. Music is also cultural from an histori- cal as well as a literary standpoint. Through music we are able to trace the manners of a particular age or a par- ticular people. For example, the music of the eighteenth century reflects the (juiet, leisurely life of the people of that cejitury. Russian music, on the other hand, with its haunting melan- choly, exhibits all the phases of misery and wretchedness through which that unhappy people has passed. We might mention here, also, American jazz, unfortunately the only type of music which is recognized as distinctly Amer- ican, which was an outgrowth of the hectic conditions of the World War and which exemplifies, morally as well as musically the fact that emphasis has been placed upon the wrong beat. The history of music also teaches us about the lives of the composers, and as in literature a man’s works become much more interesting after we know something of his life and experiences, so in music we can appreciate the way in which the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Grieg expresses their souls’ emo- tions. It is interesting to note in this connection, also that those composers who have experienced and suffered most have given us our best music. In addition to the literary and histor- ical value gained from the study of music, there is a third and more prac- tical value, perhaps, in the fact that the study stimulates mental activity. When a person is playing a composi- tion, the mind has to grasp many notes in a second. A certain noted composer in playing his waltz has to play about thirty notes a second. Consider at how great a speed the mind must work to accomplish so much. Music, however, has emotional value as well as cultural value. It stimulates the mind first to listening, then think- 32