Ipswich High School - Tiger Yearbook (Ipswich, MA)

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Housewives washing and cooking and mending and doing all the seemingly- small jobs that women do and get little credit for, but which accom- plish a great deal because they are unselfishly done, Clammers and fishermen hauling a hard- earned living from the sea,- All these occupations and more are being done under your elms whose branches stretch to heaven, Beside your river pursuing its winding but persistent course through marshes with salt hay and creeks to the At- lantic coast, Where the staunch land and powerful ocean meet each other in one splurge of Nature’s beauty: White sand soothing to the bare feet of myriads of people in the summer- time, And briny bay with white breakers and deep shadows that I try to paint as deep green But when I look again, the color has changed to blue or gray with dark shadows pursuing each other between the rolling waves, And I cannot paint it, but only won- der about the Person who could have created such a marvelous thing as an ocean, Welcome at all seasons of the year: Inviting for an icy plunge on a hot day, or a boat ride through the choppy waves, And beautiful and ever-changing and fragrant of salt just to behold and inhale in the autumn or winter. Village of so much beauty and mean- ing that I cannot express, The Indians simply called you Aga- wam, A name in which they summed up all the fading past, the glowing present, and the future Predicted by the seagulls, soaring high above, gliding down oni the wind and swooping up again. In their wild graceful beauty, and their whiteness, symbol of hope. Ruth Wilson ’42 23

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Rima, whose spirit was gay and blithe, was destroyed by fire. Their romance, while it lasted, was beautiful, strange, tragic, and almost fantastic. “Without ever departing from its quality of a tale, this story symbolizes the yearning of the human soul for the attainment of perfect love and beauty in this life — that impossible perfection which we must all learn to see fall from its high tree and be consumed in flames as was Rima, the bird-girl. After reading this book, when gazing at a dense forest or wooded district, you unconsciously think of the “green man- sions” of Abel and Rima. “Green Mansions” — “green” for the forest foliage and “mansions” for the high, lofty, majestic trees of South America, — even the name is symbolic of the story. Ruth Perley ’41 AGAWAM I am wanting something that describes and pictures in one word my village Her romantic past, lingering in wind- ing shady streets that first were cow- paths And have clung to the traditions of that early era; and we blindly follow them, Little realizing how much time we waste, but knowing very well that they are more charming the way they are. Having quaint names that hail from former times, Bordered with old, decrepit houses that hold whispers of lives that yearned and loved and wept much as we do now, and made history; And whose cellars sigh beneath the bur- den of their stored-up knowledge About passageways and musty closets holding documents and buried treas- ure unknown now to the world, but still existing. Streets passing by cemeteries filled with illegible gravestones that once were painstakingly wrought and painful- ly laid above the graves of the beloved dead. I sometimes wander through the crook- ed rows of them, Bent before seasons of storm and bleached by the sun, And wonder, “Where are these people now?” But unremembered and uncelebrated as their names are to me now, still I know That their lives have made you what you are, O town of my adoption; Village with farmers tilling the sandy soil, And factory-workers making stockings and fluorescent lighting, And carpenters measuring the gobd beam and building, building, Children studying and learning to live at the schools and playgrounds, and in the homes, 22

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Graduation Essays THE OBLIGATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN By George Senseney M ANY years ago, a small band of voyagers landed on the shores of Massachusetts. Persecuted and oppress- ed in their native land, they had wan- dered haplessly from one country to another, forever in search of a land where they might practice their beliefs free from political restraint. After years of wanderings they undertook the voyage to the New World. They did not come in search of gold or other material riches, but in search of the riches of freedom. These pilgrims were typical of the surge of immigrants who were to follow in years to come, all in search of a new life of freedom and happiness. Those who followed were from every nation, large and small. Peoples from western Europe settled along the surg- ing frontiers and formed the backbone of the mighty westward movement. Peoples from England and France ■settled along the eastern coast and northern borders of the United States and Canada, while the Spanish conquer- ors took all the south and west. Then, with the coming of the Industrial Revo- lution in the nineteenth century, much cheap labor was brought from southern Europe, e. g. Greece, Italy, and Ru- mania. Thus we see that our country is made up of a huge assorted mixture of all the countries of the world. Each and every one had different customs, different creeds, different ways of life. From this amorphous mass was formed the modern American nation, with every citizen in it not a Frenchman, nor an Englishman, not a Greek, nor an Italian, but something entirely new and differ- ent — an American. Some of us fail to realize and appre- ciate the freedom we enjoy as Ameri- cans. Since the day our Constitution was framed, the people of the United States have enjoyed more freedom of thought and action than any other na- tion in the world. Our Constitution still remains the greatest document on human liberty ever written. We as citizens of the United States, enjoy a freedom of speech and of the press which endows us with a liberty en joyed by few. Where else in the world can one read a newspaper in which the views of the people are so clearly expressed or where there is so sincere an attempt to represent truth in so far as it can be determined in the welter of modern events? We may read the latest news from over seas or the news of the internal business of our country, free and uncensored. We have a strong voice in the gov- ernment ctf our country. We elect 24