Lincoln High School - Lincolnian Yearbook (Tacoma, WA)

Page 20 text:

P18216 THE LINCOLNIAN June covered' what I liked best. What I considered more important, I had formed a desire to learn more. I wondered what hand had guided me in choosing my course. Up to my Junior year I had not done any great amount of reasoning. l had taken the subjects I did mainly be- cause they were in my course. I could not now say why I chose that particular course. When I started for home darkness had settled, and the new moon risen. lt was an ideal night for a walk alone. Ill. I MAKE SOME DECISIONS N the next few days after my talk with the Professor, I kept think- ing along the same lines, and I repeated over and over some of the things he had said. I formed certain opinions which I suppose I have pos- sessed a long time, yet have never ex- pressed. The boy that I used to be had in his early years formed many ambi- tions. There are times when some thot of the future makes even the small boy form desires for the future. But as long as a man has hope, he is building futures.'As he gains in years he discards one ambition or hope for another: and when he has reached that stage where he no longer con- tinues to form new ideals and hopes, and has ceased to dream of the future here, but clings to one conception-of another life--he is truly old. Life would be worthless if we were able to see into the vastness of the future. All our expectations, hopes, dreams, would be swept aw-ay in abso- lute knowledge. I like to imagine a future, for the anticipation is as val- uable as the realization. Ideals would cease with the doubt as to what the future holds, for they would be use- less in a life previously planned out. Working would go unrewurded. Our futures would not be our own, but in the hands of fate. There was a time when the boy said, , I will be rich. But before he was rich he wondered if, after all, it paid to be rich. He tried to think of some lasting pleasure he had purchased with money, but he could not remember one. I'Ie remembered many tasks he had done in order to get the money for some desired ob- ject, but the joy of anticipation and the work it took were far more last- ing than the object itself. And he decided that money was valuable only because of the labor which had earned it. He did not care to spend a lifetime working for money. Once he had said-this boy that I used to be- l am going to be President, and at other times, I am going to be famous. But when he was older he remembered how in high school he had reached some positions in the school life which bore the relation to the school that being an executive bore to the larger world. And the prominence which attended them had been only worldly feelings with the novelty, and the fame took the form of humdrum of small value, for it left the owner poorer than before. that wore off labor. It was No, the boy did not want these things, he decided. Worldly successes, at times so glittering, faded into un- reality in the weary hours of realiza- tion. When the body was weary from work, only the mental contentment of the spirit could bring a feeling of comfort. Q I DO not want to be President. I I would rather be rather ordinary than famous, or rich in material be- longings. Even ordinary people may possess a wealth of the things really worth while. - l have not tried to get an educa- tion to make money. I feel that if I

Page 19 text:

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-

Page 21 text:

June THE LINCOLNIAN P53917 have any talent, and most people have some, I could not develop it, as a farmer raises his pigs, and sell it for money. I have lately come to look upon ambition as the ancient Romans did. To be ambitious is to have desire for power or wealth or fame. It is to want to be something, or to have something which gives one power over other people. It was the thwart- ing of an ambition when Caesar was murdered, when Napoleon was ex- iled, and it will be the defeat of the kaiser's ambition when this war is done. When men grow ambitious, there comes the lust for power over other men, the struggle for suprema- cy, strife, and finally, temporary vic- tory for one. There is enough in the world, I think, for every one to have plenty of the necessities, and the immaterial riches of the mind and spirit are limitless. The problem whose solu- tion is most important is that of dis- tributing the necessities so that every one has plentyg and this the future shall, at least in part, solve. The day when men believed the Prussian doc- trine that life is a struggle for ex- istence in which only the fittest in material and physical senses can sur- vive, is past. The new faith in the Brotherhood of Man is coming with the future. A new meaning of democracy is coming. Men who once believed that the might of the majority made right, will change their beliefs to a broader democratic spirit which shall recog- nize, the rights of every individual, and which shall give every man a ,voice in the decision of political and economic questions. Majority rule .willwpass a-awayfand in its place 'will come the rule by all. 4 Many changes are coming in the future. More important even than the political changes will be the gradual solution of economic troubles, and the improvement of the welfare' of society. I have been looking somewhat into the future, for I am soon to go. The future holds a charm for every one, and I have been yielding to it. It is the charm of the unknown. IV. ,I AM OFF OMMENCEMENT is over, and I have launched out into the fu- ture. As I sat on the platform during the exercises, I was musing on the futures of my classmates around me. lc was the last time the students of my class would all be gathered together. Some l should never see again. More I would meet occasionally. Some I would associate with as I had in the past four years. Perhaps, I thot as I sat there, the boy in the seat ahead of me will some day be a white-haired old man, mellowed with the philosophy and knowledge of the sweetness of living, which comes with years. He might become a minister to a congregation of the Brotherhood of Man. Per- haps the girl who sits not far from him in the same row will be a sweet old lady, his wife and helper. I won- der if their youthful comradeship will last thru the years! I believe the best thing I got out of my high-school course is friend- ship. Friends are the best posses- sions, and I have found many at high school. There is the Professor, whom I met only six months ago, but whom I should never have known had I not come to high school. Hs has been a teacher to me, and a friend. He has helped me, and shown me the best ideals. -There is the English Teacher, a delightful, philosophic man who lives in that charmed land called Content- ment-a man without ambition to be,