Lincoln High School - Lincolnian Yearbook (Tacoma, WA)

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Pareu THE. LINCOLNIAN June his memories. Did you like the country? he asked at last. l never enjoyed myself more. l think l like the cherries best, l re- plied, with a grin at the remember- ing of it. He told me the whole story of his life, from the time he left the coun- try until he went back again with his family twenty years later. l'm going back again, Peter, he said. l don't know why l came to the city this last time. l thot it was to give my boys a better education. Maybe it was. l've found out myself what the city means. l've found out what a man wants. lt isn't money that l want, Peter. No man really wants money. lt isn't power or influence. lt isn't promin- ence, or success, or a career. lt isn't the diversions and amusements of the city. lt isn't anything you think it is, that a man really wants. The real thing is contentment. Some can find it in the city, maybe. Mine is in the country. A The Professor impressed me more than l can say. You have started me thinking, l told him as l was leaving. ln a short time l am going to start on a journey into the fu- ture. ' You have already started, my boy, the Professor said. You started on that journey about eighteen years ago. He picked up his spade, and l turned away. Well, good luokl he called after me. As l walked on l mused over his words. He was not a preacher, but a teacher. ' He had told a simple, sin- cere story, and the sermon was left unsaid. 'l resolved to think it out, and make my decision before l started on my journey into the future. ll. I LOOK BEHIND Y path led thru a park where spring had left green lawns, the blossoming dogwood and maples, the sweet, heavy fragrance of purple lilacs, and the bright beds of scarlet tulips. The air was warm yet from the dying sunlight, and perfumed with the odor of many blossoms. l sat down on one of the benches, with my face toward the west, and watched the sun sink slowly behind a bank of clouds, the sky Hush yellow, and then pink, and finally lavender. After a while one clear star came out, large, and silvery, and bright. As l sat there l thot back over the years l could remember. Some things which happened when l was not yet four, l still recalled. It is wonderful how the memory of happy events stays long after the first pleasure is gone. l remembered a little boy in knee trousers lingering with his comrade on their way to school. ln after years he could not tell much of his first day, for it was not much of an event to him. His first fight he will never forget. What a battle it wasl How disgracefully the boy was pounded: how his eyes were blackened: how his head achedl The iight was un- even, for there were three aggressors ,and tho they were smaller, the boy was no match for them. l-le liked to think, too, in after years, that he would otherwise have been the victor rather than the vanquished. Long afterward the boy remem- bered that comrade, who had been his first friend, and who had backed him in the fight, and held his coat and walked home with him after the affair was over. A few years later the boy entered a new period of his life. His attitude toward everything was changed. He

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i 0 hs mrulniem COMMENCEMENT 1918 A Journey Into the Future A TRAVEL IN MY EASY CHAIR And I looked into the future, I. I HAVE TO GO HE other day, as I was passing the Professofs house, I was hailed with a shout, and looking around, saw the Professor himself, garbed in a pair of faded blue overalls, a rough shirt, open at the neck, and no hat at all, with a spade and hoe over one shoulder, come striding toward me. Well, Peter, he said to me in his clear, good-natured voice ias he put down his spade and hoe. I guess you take me for a farmer, don't you? 'You didn't know I was raised on the farm. ' I like the Professor. I have not .known him for more than six months, -but we are already fast friends, and the more I know of him the more I admire him for his sincerity in every- thing he does, for his higness and un- selfishness, but most of all, for his patriotism. He has a boy in France. He has two boys at the training camp and another not yet old enough to go. Their mother has the same unselfish- ness and patriotism that I like him for. I like them all. As we were talking, the Professor rested one hand on the low picket fence, and held the other out in the direction of the lawn. l'm going to spade up the grass and plant beans, he said. He talked for some time about his far as human eye could see -Tennyson. plans for his garden. He talked with the genuine enthusiasm of one who loved the work. Gradually, however, the conversation shifted to other sul:- jects, for the Professor is a philoso- pher, and his mind cannot run in a narrow little channel. Peter, he said, laying his hand on my shoulder in a friendly manner characteristic of him, you will be thru school in june. What do you intend to make of yourself? What are you planning to do in the fu- ture? Well, in a way, I know, l said slowly. I haven't spoken to any- one about it, because I haven't very clearly planned it out. l'm not going to ask you what it is, the Professor said. He looked up toward the sun. It's getting a little warm in the sun, now, he said, Iet's get into the shade. He drew me into the shade of the house and we sat down on the porch. Have you ever lived on a farm? he asked me. For a short time, I answer. I like the country. I lived for a whole summer out on a farm, during har. vesting time. We harvested every- thing from cherries to apples. I was raised on a farm, he said, hut I did not like it then. He gazed ahsently at the ground, totally lost in

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Jvne THE LINCOLNIAN P12015 religiously hated any sort of program, or recitation of poems, or singing. To stand before a roomful of parents, or even pupils from another class, was to be abhorred worse than a whip- ping. lt was a feeling which the boy never got over until he was in his second year in high school. ' And about the same time the boy had his first experience with the op- posite sex. Up to this time, the fem- inine part of the world, with the ex- ception of mothers and sisters and other women relatives, had been strict- ly avoided. Now the boy began to notice that girls were rather pretty- some of them-and were rather afraid to do what boys did, and all but one or two were dreadful tell-tales. Girls liked pretty dresses which were fluffy and light, and which you could not sit down in on the grass for fear of green stains. They were awfully silly about clothes! The boy noticed that girls liked flowers, and boys were sup- posed to bring bouquets to the teach- er, but before you got to the teacher you would have to pass by a certain young lady, and you desired her favor above all others, and she would re- mark that she just loved flowers and your masculine heart would melt, as you had previously decided it should, and the flowers would reach the right party. These days of boyhood had been happy ones, and the boy remembered them long afterward with almost re- gret. The contrivances he had, boy- like, built: the sports the boys had had: the tramps they used to go on: the swimming and fishing and scout- ingg he would never take so much pleasure in again. His days as a small boy had passed. And not so very many months came and passed before the grammar school was' finished and the high school reached. Old associations were bro- ken. Companions of boyhood separ- ated. New relationships would be formed, The boy did not forget the last week of his grammar school with its feeling of anticipation: Nor was the party on the last night forgotten. He had not realized then that that night was the last of a period in his life: that on the morrow he should begin a new journey: that there were decisions to be made before he started out into the future. His first day in high school had been a memorable one. The boy had made a decision, and started on the road to Somewhere rather than the road to Anywhere. There had been many good times in the former years the boy spent in high school. Friendships had been formed which were never to be broken. Happy days came which were to be unforgettable. There were feelings, sensations, thots, so far from the physical sensations, but in later years so much more real, that should always live as pleasant memories. AND as l sat on the bench, in the park, as the evening was settling down, l wondered if there would ever come such happy days again as those l was just laying aside. l wondered, too, if l had much to regret in the years l had spent in school. ' l had learned no trade. Other students had taken commercial courses and secured positions at once. Some had taken work in the manual train- ing line, and were already partly trained for good jobs. But l was among those who had taken the studies they did because they liked them, and because they thot those studies wouldmake them better think- ers and citizens. l had studied the academic subjects, the sciences, ma- thematics, the literature, history and language. l had secured a foundation for a general education, and had dis-