Malvern Collegiate Institute - Muse Yearbook (Toronto, Ontario Canada)

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,T H E -IL Q55 No, ma'am. if I had it to do over again, I would certainly strive to be a number one boy, a good athlete and a first-class debater. You believe me, I am sure. For what did my high school, dear old Harbord give me? Just some rags and tatters of the things I loved and love stillg the rooms of my spirit are draped with bits ripped from Wordsworth lmy English master had never heard of The Prelude-it wasn't in the authorized school editionli glorious banners from Tennyson, sweet archaic bowls, mugs, platters from Shakespeare set along the mantel shelf of my heart: the carpet is a rag rug, a sort of hooked rug from old Quebec, with bits of Parkman, with authentic snatches of Mac- kenziana, and through it goes a pattern of thin, faded stuff that seems to be of Latin and Greek material .... I don't know: it might be nice to have a room for your spirit all checkered up with nice modernistic geometric patterns, with bright. keen paint on the walls, and trophies of sport set around. But I like the room Harbord helped me furnish. My heart is very happy there. NIGHT LIFE Anne Marjorie Beer 66 AN you night-edit to-night with me? said the Women's Editor one day as I, a green reporter on the College daily, went into the office to receive the day's assignment of work. Yes! I gulped in eagerness, and immediately after was torn between fear and yearning. Night-editing! The phrase conjured up no picture, but casual remarks of other night-editors haunted me for the rest of the day. My family received the news with a misgiving mingled with pride-never before had a member of our tribe stayed up all night to edit a newspaper! I scoffed at the misgiving and basked in the pride, and set out for the night office about eight o'clock. Any feeling of self-importance vanished when I arrived there. The monotonous sound of printing presses at work, the peculiar, haunting smell of printer's ink plunged me immediately into a new and strange world. Here and there were reporters and editors, trying to talk above the noise. pounding on typewriters, writing feverishly. Instantly impressed with the feeling that the task at hand was all- important, I hurried into the inner office where the Women's Editor was already deep in work. She greeted me cheerily, gave me a few words of general advice, thrust a pile of papers into my hand, and bade me proof-read. Inspired by the spirit of urgency that seemed everywhere I grabbed a pencil and commenced. How grateful I was for the proof-reading I had done in the good old days on THE MUSE! Ilfll

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E .li1E.,Blg'.Q-...c..-.iw I use JUST ONE MORE CHANCE By Gregory Cl-ark HAT shall I write about? I asked the editor of the Muse. Anything you like. said he, easily. Yes, but you're the editor. It is up to you to give the assignment. I How about this? he said, sitting forward with a jabbing finger, and all he needed was a cigar stub to look like Lou Marsh. How about-'If I had my high school days to live over again'? Sold, said I. If I had my high school days to do over again, now that my Har- bord days are twenty-live years behind me-texcuse me! Malvern was out in the country then: you don't mind if I went to Harbord, do you'?I I would do again many of the things I did. But I would play some game. I never played any game at Har- bord. Not even hookey. But now that I see the men around me, I notice that those of them who played games are not as lit physically as I am. They seem to have spent too much energy when they were young. Furthermore, most of them have a sense of the Manly Thing, the sportsmanlike thing, which I lack, and it gives me a fearful ad- vantage over them. If I had my chance over again, I would play rugby or hockey or something so as to be even with my fellow men. I hate to have the bulge on them like this. Then I would pay more attention to mathematics. The only way I got through mathematics-oh, well! Why tell such things. This isn't confession, and anyway I am a continuing Methodist. But here I am, nearly forty years old, without the slightest logi- cal sense whatever. And in a world filled with logic, with people whose brains work smoothly on the principle that a X b : c, I am terribly handicapped. They all said that what goes up must come down, and, like a fool, I believed them and did not spend one cent in the stock market. So I never had 350.000, as all the other fellows did, the ones who were good at mathematics. It would have been nice to have had S50,000. I said. have had. I had my chance, when I was young, to take a business course at high school. But I missed it. I would take that business course now, if I had a second chance, because everybody who knows about business knows what is wrong with business now. I'm different. l'm just ignorant. I don't know what is the matter with business. So it goes. Neglected, ignored, waved airily aside were all my chances to be a good, sound, knowledgeable Toronto citizen. owning my own home twith an 80 per cent mortgage on itj a good party man, voting the right way all the way-why, my goodness! I never vote the same way twice, and lately I haven't voted at all. And as for the mortgage on my house, I don't even own a house. The man who owns my house was good at trigonometry. CAnd rents are doWn.J E181

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-THE MUSE The written material, or copy, was brought in, intermittently, throughout the evening. There were accounts of meetings represent- ing many branches of university life. interviews with students or pro- fessors on local topics. write-ups of many games, announcements, feature-articles. All these had been assigned inthe editorial offices that day by the Mens and Womens News Editors. Each reporter, having written O.Ii. by his tor herl assignment, was responsible for having his copy in the night-office as early as possible. For a long. long time I sat there. reading and rewriting material. It was then given to the linotype man who set the copy in type. His reddened eyes and exprcssionless face aroused my sympathy as I watched him sit before his machine. his lingers moving like auto- matons, hour after hour. The type was set in narrow rows, and, hav- ing been covered by a thin strip of paper, was subjected by us to a heavy roller which had been well painted with printer's ink-and presto. there were printed words on paper. I learned that this Was a galley sheet. We took all such sheets back to the inner otiice for further proof-reading. By this time the smell of printer's ink seemed as natural as breathing, the noise and hurry of the otiice a part of life. But the night was just beginning! Now the Womens Editor spread a copy of an old issue before her and called me over to watch her make up a dummy copy. Prints of the advertisements were pinned on the old issue, and into the space that remained all the material on the galley sheets had to be arranged. Never before had I studied a newspaper for the form of its make-up. Now I judged each article for its length and its relation to front page importance. Thus: was the third meeting of the Seven Occult Socratics of more interest to student readers than the interview with Professor Dry-as-Dust on the influence of residence alarm clocks? Was the account of the student who had been pushed into the swimming pool at a dance as important as the advance-note of a play written by a local freshman '3 Should the rugby hero's picture go here, or there? Keeping in mind the relative importance of the material the Women's Editor worked swiftly and carefully, rejecting this, placing that. I marvelled at the quickness of her decisions as her blue pencil went up and down the pages. allocating space until the skeleton was complete. Ever since that Iirst lesson in formation I have looked on the pages of any newspaper with a reverent eye. Unconsciously now I appraise a front page for its balanced arrangement, or lack of it. It was well into the morning hours before we were under way with our next big task. that of writing head-lines. First, though, should their form be packed or sloping? QI had never thought of it beforell I learned that those with three lines had a different name from those with two. that each had a certain number of drop lines in varying sizes of type. I learned that others were specially set by hand by Dick. the typesetter. The making of them was much more exacting than solving cross-word puzzles ever was. Each line could contain only a certain number of lettersg frequently I would be stung by the splendour of a sudden thought for a good line only to discover that it had far too many letters. For instance, l20l