Latin School of Chicago - Sigillum Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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Substitute For Turkey ALrsoN BRYAN Alison R. Bryan, 7CQ, Princeton '13, engaged for many years in missionary work in India for the Presbyterian Church. In America's outposts far from the homeland, the celebration of holidays is more than a matter of form. With the approach of Thanksgiving, word comes over the cables to the City of Jackals that world-famed Dr. Robert E. Speer is to be the mission's guest. His hostess longs for a turkey to celebrate the day, but has to rest content with the traditional India substitute, a peacock. Twenty miles from the City of Jackals, flocks of them decorate the sugar-cane plantations, plundering fields of grain, undisturbed by the pious Hindus. Shooting in most of the village areas would outrage the people who regard the peacock as sacred to the gods, if not an incarnation of a god. Word of the distinguished guest and the plan for the dinner reaches Kodoli. Both for Dr. Speer's sake and also for the sake of the sport, the commission to procure a Thanksgiving peacock is accepted. The day previous, Wednesday, arrives, and is crowded with pressing duties, delaying the shoot until late afternoon. The village of Thanapude is chosen because the headman or mayor is friendly, and because the farmers are glad to be rid of the flock that decimates their slender grain supply. Arriving near sundown, the birds have left the fields, and gone to roost in the trees bordering the plantations. In the half light, shooting is impossible. But hope is not lost. By ten oiclock, the nearly full moon will be riding high enough in the cloudless sky. So, your alumnus with two or three Indian friends waits. At last, against the brilliant disc of the moon, here and there in trees without dense foliage, balls that might be our quarry are discernible. Getting the ball fairly against the moon and between the sights of a twelve gauge Winchester shotgun, and the trigger is pulled. A thud a few feet in front brings Dr. Speer's Thanksgiving feast to the ground. But the day is to be celebrated in several other homes of these American outposts. So on to another tree and another, until six of the peafowl are in the bag. It is near midnight, and time to tramp the five or six miles through the fields and across the Varna river to Kodoli and home. Just then out of the shadows into the brilliant moonlight steps first one and then another, with long cudgels, short axes, and other village weapons. They block our path. We protest. Constantly being reinforced, until well over one hundred men oppose us, they charge us with shooting illegally. VVe explain we have the British Government license to shoot. But they do not believe us. It seems that in the darkness, we had strayed over the unmarked boundary into Devavadi, God's village, out of the fields of the friendly mayor's village. Wondering if it is possible to bluff in a situation of this kind, we raise our gun, levelling it at the ringleader, a short stocky farmer with an ax, who pulls back his shirt and unconcernedly challenges

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SIGILLUM After that, he went into his father's manufacturing business or some friendly stockbroker's office. Every boy expected to make, and usually did make, quite quickly a good deal of money, often married a girl with a good deal more. Ten years out of school, he'd turn into a respectable member of a suburban community- Winnetka, perhaps, if inclined to plain living and high thinking, Lake Forest, if the reverse. In either case, he had a wife, a car, two children, a Balance in the Bank-and, I suppose, a Future . . . Yes, I know I escaped, but that was because I happened to sink into being what was then, and still is, in Chicago, a most uncommon kind of social outcast, a professional scribbler. And even I made some money, one couldn't help it, in the Jazz decade. In 1938, on the other hand-but I'll spare you the comparison. Let me say this only, that, having four nephews between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one, I understand and sympathize with your problems as perhaps a good many of my contemporaries are unable to. You've a tougher job to tackle than we had, and much the same equipment as was ours. Boys haven't changed much since IQZO. Theyire still lively and fun-loving, enthusiastic and cynically clear-sighted, now as they were then. Now as then, they feel that they have seen through thingsf' only to find, as the years revolve, that it's really the things that have seen through them, and have taken their measure with a slow inevitability. I'd like to close with a wise and playful adage, some smart half-truth wittily expressed, such as Virginia Woolf used so charm- ingly to round off her essays. But, at the moment, my mind is a blank. Failing that, how about a quotation from a famous author? CSay, for example, Hugh Walpole's once celebrated It's not life that matters, but the courage one brings to it . . . What a lie that is, by the way! As if life didn't matter more than anything else one can think oflj But, somehow, I'm honest enough not to try to be clever or graceful where only candor will do. I've spent enough years being insincere to have come to value sincerity as the supreme virtue. So I'll be silent now, at the risk of sounding halting and inept, and bow myself out with the cheering reflection Ccheering, that is, to youj that, whatever you do, you can't make any very bad mis- takes for a comfortable number of years, since, as Emerson says- ah, there's our famous author at last!- Youth is everywhere in place.

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SIGILLUM us to shoot. CWe have often wondered if he knew the gun was un- loaded lj After that, they take the firearms away, and lead us to their village gathering place. Keeping us waiting for an hour or more in the chill of the November midnight, they stamp out the fire before which we try to warm outselves. That is just a little below the standard of oriental hospitality. Having convinced themselves that we are poachers, as we have been shooting at night, doubtless having their superstitious fear aroused by the shots in the dark, they decide to take us to the mayor of their hamlet, who lives in a larger village two miles distant. We have no choice but to follow. On the way, they begin to have doubts as to the wisdom of their decision. Through our men, they offer first to accept ten then five, finally even one rupee to let us off. We firmly refuse, and finally at last arrive at the mayorfs home. Prolonged knocking and shouting arouses the reluctant officer. There is more delay in preparing for the hearing. After our statement, the villagers have almost nothing to say. They are rebuked by the mayor for their presumption in detaining us. They slink off home, and as we go back through their village, the whole place appears wrapped in the deepest slumber. At five A. M., Thanksgiving morning, just before sunrise, we find one of the men waiting with the bag of six peafowl. Through the early morning dew on the lush grass of the river banks, we tramp wearily and hungrily home, ford the river, and arrive just as the dawn comes up like thunder. A runner is hastily engaged and Dr. Speer's Thanksgiving Hturkeyl' starts on the twenty mile final lap, to arrive in good time. The maintenance of prestige in a country of 35o,ooo,ooo people controlled by an army of a few thousand British soldiers, is a matter of major importance. When the Governor of Bombay Presidency drives from Poona to his summer capital, Mahableshwar, the 80 miles or so of road are cleared of traffic, sentries line the way. When the Viceroy travels by rail, sections of the right of way are policed by troops, stationed within hailing distance of one another for mile after mile. It was for maintaining the prestige of the white man, even a non-European American, that the British district magistrate, sent his first deputy to God's village. The men were lined up before him, told in emphatic terms how wrong they were to have arrested the sahib. Prostrating themselves on the ground they seek pardon, well knowing what it would mean to have a punitive police post saddled upon them, the expense of which they would have to pay, not to mention the incessant private demands of the police. The 'fsahib is merciful, they are told, and have asked that they should not be punished. There was another thanksgiving in God's village celebrated that day, as the deputy magistrate and his men left. 5