Manual Training High School - Prospect Yearbook (Brooklyn, NY)

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bottom twenty-nine and a half hours from now, or at four o'clock tomor- row afternoon. This box is weighted with iron, and there is seven feet of water at the bottom of the silo. You will be dead long before you touch bottom, and I shall be revenged. You stole part of my brain, when you took that invei .tion long ago. I shall watch your fact as you go down, and be hapnv. J' t five in the morning T will leave to catch the seven o'clock train to the city. I will leave orders for someone to come for you at five in the afternoon. He will get here, find a note directing him to the silo and will discover your corpse on the box, completely submerged in water. And I shall be bound for South America perhaps, 'cr Japan. They will never find me. M first I tried to reason with him, then I cursed him violently, and finally numb with cold, feverishly hot at other times I looked at him. And he talked on and on, boring me through and through with his mad man eyes. His talk was punctuated with the little clicks. After a while I could see him no more but heard him above me. Then he moved down to another landing. I lost all idea of time. The raving talk of that crazed inventor, the clicking seemed to be something I had long heard when John prodded me to at- tention. It is a quarter after five, he spoke gruesomely, I leave, you 'll see me no more. But I depart satisfied at last, you will pay for your theft! He left, and ere long I became in- sensible to everything. At length cold water around my legs caused me to take notice. From John's figures, I suppose it was about ten o'elock Sun- day morning. I heard a click, and felt the water rise a little. I shrieked, I wept, I prayed. ,Do you know, can you imagine, what it is like to be compelled to drown, to be absolutely powerless to prevent it? My brain told me I was drowning. I struggled against my bonds. I put every bit of vigor in me into these terrific efforts. With a last super- numan heave, I felt them give. I sat up in bed in a hospital. A couple of husky attendants had been holding me down. My brain was full of questions, but it was a long time before I learned the full history of my miraculous deliverance from death. John had told the livery man to call for me at five. He had done so and after a search, found me on the chest floating in the water. John had some- how forgotten to put the scrap-iron in the box, for it was found in the barn. But even so, I came near dying as he wished. I had a severe case of pneu- monia complicated by brain fever. All that medical skill could do has since been done. Now I am here, in this delightful California air, regaining every day more of my former strength. It is like a page from Poe. ,il..i-i-l- I wonder why this poet speaks of the stream this way: The sleepy river drowsed and dreamed. Probably because it was confined to its bed. Reason for Haste. McCloskey- Phat is yure hoarry, Mike? McGowan-Con sprinkling cartj Sure it's 'goin t' rain, Pat, an it's me that wants t' git me wur-rk done befoor it comes. Twenty-five

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would look at John as being decidedly queer with his experiments and such was what I thought. But now it strikes me that he may have meant something else. n VVe were on the outskirts of the village by now. I thought we must be nearing our destination. How long do we drive? I queried. Oh, 'bout an hour, replied my guide after I had asked him twice. Having had no supper this gave me some dismay. Besides it was a good deal colder than I had expected. It was no cheerful journey that I looked forward to. And yet it actually turned out worse than my most pessi- mistic thoughts. As we moved along a mist or fog seemed to come from nowhere, and a slight flurry of snow began to fall. The like of the fog I have never seen. I looked up and saw some stars, yet could not see the horse's head in front of me. At other times it parted before us, only to close in after a time. It would become thick, then thin, it would rise and fall. I felt that every hoof-beat was playing my funeral march, and the fog was dancing to the tune of it. Like thoughts persisted in spite of the fact that I do not believe in presentiments. Perhaps my empty stomach caused them. At length, after what seemed hours, we stopped beside a gate. I got out, and immediately the driver turned around, disappearing into the fog that had troubled me so. I stumbled along a road and found myself before an old, weather-beaten house. It had long since lost its paint, and was now the color of charred wood. I had hardly knocked before the door was opened by John. He looked Twenty-four at me wildly, grabbed my grip, and threw it into the house. I started to say something.about a bite to eat, and a cup of hot coffee, but he interrupted me gru'Tiy. The invention will work better if you don 't eat, he growled, and pulled me in the direction of a shadowy out- line that proved to be a barn. Through the fog it looked like a monstrous ogre waiting to devour me. I shivered violently, half from the cold, half at the thought my morbid brain had conjured up. The barn had at- tached to it one of those tall cylindrical structures called a silo and used for storing corn or other produce. We went up in this, clear to the top and there was a queer contraption indeed. The first thing I noticed was a huge wheel and axle. A heavy rope was wound around the wheel, and at the end attached to the four corners of what looked like a cedar chest. I bent forward to examine and as I did so, something heavy struck the back of my head. A splitting headache brought me back to consciousness. I found my- self, without an overcoat, strapped tightly in a sitting position on the chest. My arms were raised, strapped to the rope above me. Below me was a black void. I looked over at the platform and saw John gazing at me fiercly. Listen! he half shrieked. I felt the box go down a bit just then. You've been tied there since ten o'clock. The box descends an inch every five minutes making a foot an hour. It was just thirty feet from the bottom of this silo to the bottom of that chest. In other words, as it is half-past ten now, you will reach the

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The question of how to spend vaca- tion is, we believe, worthy of much consideration. Shall you Vacations make your vacation a And real or a sham vacation? Vacations VVill it leave you men- tally and physically stronger, or weaker and less tit to re- sume your high-school studies or carry on your chosen line of work 'I By de- grees, the vacation idea is changing, Happily, it is becoming a more sensible one. Picture school boys and girls spend- ing several weeks at a summer hotel. They find there artificial attractions, and usually seek no other kind. A feast of sodas and sweets forms part of their daily program. The girl, per- haps more than the boy, is a constant member of the rocking chair brigade, where she gossips about worthless nothings. They too often keep late hours-the boy may play pool, the girl dance. They end in becoming gen- erally bored, physically tired and men- tally dull. Turn now to an organized summer camp. You find here boys and girls of entirely different stamp. Keenly enjoying outdoor life, daily perform- ing definitely assigned tasks, they find Twenty-six DITORIALS their pleasures and duties satis- factorily equalized. Early hours, wholesome food, mental relaxation, and the best form of phys- ical recreation, give these campers last- ing benefit. Besides acquiring alert- ness, enthusiasm, energy, a spirit of self'-reliance and self-restraint, they learn much of practical value. The dangers in canoeing, the necessity of being able to swim, lessons in first aid to the injured, and general camp knowledge are all absorbed and appre- ciated by them. Do they wind up be- coming bored of everything in life? Not they! VVith a never ending source of exercise and entertainment in the great out-of-doors, they waste no idle moments, and return to tasks of a more serious nature, in school or business, with vigor and added capability. lf you may choose, which vacation will you take? What will you make of your opportunities? The good old summer time has again arrived, and with it comes a welcome vacation. Some of us Be Sure will go to the moun- To Return tains, others to the sea- shore, Cof course, none will go to Europej, and still others will remain right here in Brooklyn. Many will go to work for the summer months, and have a taste of business life. It is to these that we wish to say something, and that something is this: Don't forget to come back. Time and again Manualites have gone to