London South Collegiate Institute - Oracle Yearbook (London, Ontario Canada)

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32 the finished schedule found Hartwell and Churcher College tied for the lead. Garry had in all truth pulled a rather mediocre team through most of the season. The game to break the dead- lock was arranged for Thanksgiving Day. At Peter's suggestion Lysbeth invited Garry down to Norwood for the week- end preceding the game. They drove the sixty odd miles on Friday afternoon, and arrived just in time for dinner. Table talk that evening was confined mostly to rugby. Time flew, and before they were aware that the evening had gone, eleven o'clock rang softly through the house. Garry had just started to undress. That is he had kicked and wiggled one unoffensive shoe until it had gone flying across the room. A rap on the door was followed by: Garry, do you mind if I come in a second, and then by Peter. Say, young fellow --and the closing door muffled their voices. There must have been, however, some connection between Say, young fellow and the fact that the following morning found both Garry and Peter engaged in what might be termed a spirited kicking duel in the paddock. Garry kicked well, but couldn't equal Peter's great 60-yard punts. However surprised Garry was at this, the greatest shock, however, came just before they returned to the barn. Peter drew his attention to the open hay-loft door, some fifty yards distant. Then with no apparent effort dropped the ball cleanly through the open door. To say that Peter was surprised is all too mild. Upon my soul! Can you do that every time? asked Garry. Oh, no, not every time, said Peter. I missed it several times this year, once last spring. Forgot to allow quite enough for the wind. Garry failed to see the laughter in Peter's eyes. Breakfast was over. Peter had gone into town, and Lysbeth and Garry on a tour of inspection found themselves standing in the locality of what Peter had that morning called the stadium. Garry had just told Lysbeth how great a rugby player her father was, and Lys- beth with feigned pique had said: Of course I know. Whose father is he? You say he can drop-kick, Garry. I L. S. C. I. ORACLE shall tell-no, show you a secret. She ran back across the lawn and into the barn, from where she emerged several seconds later with a football under her arm. Approaching Garry, she said to him, From where we stand to that door is ,fifty yards, turned about and re- peated her father's feat with even less effort it seemed. It was too much for Garry. He sat down quite abruptly, and in a weak irreverent voice said, 'fLord. 'You must promise never to tell any- one, especially Dad, Lysbeth told him. Thursday brought the game. The air was cool, although the sun shone brightly, and a rising breeze promised to give zest to the kicking. Half-time found the score six-two. Garry had kicked the six points, and played a splendid game. The second half had scarcely begun when with bewildering rapidity, two near tragedies changed the whole outlook. First Garry emerged from a scrimmage with a badly torn ligament. His absence seemed to un- nerve the entire team, and a series of bad plays was climaxed by a fumble behind the line. A Churcher ball-hero fell on it, and the convert made the score now six-eight. The quarter ended with a drive by Hartwell that brought them to midfield. Up in the stand in section C the ushers were paging Miss Brown. The time-board showed but two minutes to play, when from the Hartwell bench two players arose and hurried toward the play. One limped badly-it was Garry. The crowd,sensing the un- usual, cheered. The other player evi- dently a substitute, seemed very slight beside Garry, and several people in the closer seats noticed the boy wore only an ordinary pair of brogues, small ones at that. The huddle resolved itself into a con- ference. Second down. A kick. The little chap was taking it -bully for him! Why it looks--why it isadrop. High, still higher, it floated now, the wind is carrying it, but carrying it straight through the fifty yards distance goal! arms. . ,The siren screams: The game is over. Hartwell 9, Churcher 8. ,

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L. S. C. I. ORACLE f . Af ...e f if v- L Tx 'X r ' lf A. 31 a'- l I t T..,-..- ref X tr l' HEREDITY By FRANK WIHITE Peter was an architect, that is, he drew plans, good plans too, of houses and churches and all sorts of magnifi- cent places, but the most wonderful plan he ever conceived never material- ized--his son's future. Still, in the end he felt no disappointment. Peter Brown loved several things---he loved his wife, his work, perhaps he loved himself Cit'sa common diseaseD but especially he loved the game of rugby. He had played, his father had played, both had graduated Hartwell College, and it was his fondest hope to have a son who should carry on. Then there was Norwood g for gen- erations it had sheltered the successive little Peter Browns and seen them be- come fine men and great rugby players. There was a barn too-a barn which had kept stride with the times to the extent of becoming a garageg behind it lay a long stretch of turf sacred to the memory of many bruised arms and scraped shins. This plot had been nominally for the exercise of the Brown horses, deceased, but had later served in a more glorious capacity for the exercise of the Brown boys. Here Peter, as had his father before him, acquired the uncanny drop- kicking skill by sending them with various degrees of success through the hay-loft door. This door was closely flankediby two small windows and the possibility of their breakage proved a far greater mental hazard than any distant goal posts were ever to be. Thus you see it was into an atmos- phere thoroughly permeated with the manly game of rugby that the stork chose to deliver a brand new Brown. Peter was told that she was just as sweet as ever she could be. Dreams .crushed-boys had so long been a Brown tradition, that the pos- sibility of an error in allotment seemed never to have entered Peter's head. However, he lived his disappointment down and resolved that Lysbeth Qfor so she was namedj should be every bit as much a lady as little Peter was to have been a man From a very lovable bit of a baby she became an exquisite littQe girl. Now on her nineteenth birthday, she was a charming, none the less exquisite, and certainly a very lovable young lady. Every one said so, but more especially did Garry Hunter. That Garry had falQen very much in love with Lysbeth was as evident as it was inevitable and as inevitable as if the fact that Lysbeth had came to Hartwell. Garry, on the other hand, was just right, Lysbeth said. He was tall but not too tall. Solid, but not too solid. His hair was blond and wavy, but not too blond nor too wavy. His jaw was square, but nicely so. And above all this young man on whom the gods so smiled was this year predicted to be a very large part of the Hartwell team. Why rugby team, of course. No, Lysbeth we don't blame at al'l, rather we offer our congratulations. ' The prediction became a reality and

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L. S. Cyl. ORACLE 33 AT MENIN GATE A. curving street flanked with tall, new shops leads out of the southeast corner of the Grand Place at Ypres. It seems to come to an abrupt end about two hundred yards farther on, but closer inspection shows it passing under a lofty archway and through a temple-like edifice. On the parapet above the arch are chiselled two large urns cov- ered by a toga. The walls within are inscribed with names-54,000 of them- names of those who have come out of great tribulation and whose grave is known only unto God. The street leads through this vaulted chamber, crosses the moat by a causeway, and, as the Menin Road, passes on out to the immortal salient. Above the arch on this outer side the valiant British lion is keeping his stern, perpetual vigil, as of old, toward that quarter whence the menace was impending. As night falls theparapetis silhouetted against the saffron sky. The murky waters of the moat reflect the outlines of Vauban's ramparts, stretching away to right and left-those marvellous earthworks faced with masonry which could withstand four years of up-to- date bombardment. Above the interminable rows of names one reads the inscription: Ad majorem Dei Gloriam Here are recorded names of officers and men who fell in Ypres salient but to whom the fortunes of war denied the known and honored burial given to their comrades in death. There is an air of hushed expectancy in the crowd which has imperceptibly f r I. gathered within this place. On the stroke of nine the bugles go. Three Belgian civilians are giving Last Post. No other sound. Against the walls memorial wreaths and fresh flowers are massed. Some women are wiping their eyesg some men, too. Others have set their faces in that look of brooding sorrow, of silent, tearless grief perpetuated in the St. Julien memorial. The buglers finish, the crowd melts away, lights are dimmed, motors re- sume their way, the place is deserted. Deserted? Not yet. The archway is suddenly filled with marching men, in full kit. They are moving up from Poperinghe to the line. Amazing numbers in this column of wraiths-over 54,000-of whom 6,000 wear the Maple Leaf. They are sing- ing an incomprehensible dirge as they swing along. Two thousand years ago the Roman Horace declared in deathless words: Dulce et decoffum est pro patria mari It is a sweet and fitting thing to die for the fatherlandf' To whom is it sweet and fitting, for God's sake? To the gassed at Vancouver Cross Roads who first inhaled the hellish fumes and gasped out their lives in torment? Pro patrial Was it sweet to these? Yes! The Roman was right. To die was sweet. Now the song of the wraiths becomes intelligible: Tell Canada, all you who pass this gate, The rest we now enjoy came all too late.