Mary Baldwin College - Bluestocking Yearbook (Staunton, VA)

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The Mary Baldivin Seminary. 17 this evening. As we were sitting down to dinner some one pushed the table, and over it went into the middle of the floor, with a loud crash of breaking dishes and rattling silver. When the debris was gathered up, we found that the only thing that had escaped complete destruction was the molasses pitcher. As, unfortunately, people cannot live without eating, and cannot well eat without dishes, we will be obliged to go home. Mother says there is always something to be thankful for, and this time it is that we will not have the trouble of packing the dishes (except the molasses pitcher which I intend to pre- serve as a relic) and that we may leave behind our handsome din ing table, which I earnestly hope will be turned into kindling wood by the mountaineers before our return. A DREAM OF WISE MEN. The night was so dull and close that stud -ing was a thing impossible. A volume of Shaw lay open on my lap, but, in spite of earnest endeavors, I had spent one hour in learning a single page. Rebellious thoughts surged through me against these men whose lives and writings must be crammed into a weary student ' s brain. The heading of the next paragraph, Goldsmith ' s Comedies, stared at me in bold, black letters and was the last straw to break the back of my good humor. Oh Oliver, Oliver, I murmured in a sudden outburst of wrath, ' ' why didn ' t you die before you wrote anything! What! what! 3 ' ou blasphemer? screamed a falsetto voice in my ear, causing me to start violently, and there in the full glow of the lamp stood the most peculiar of little men, such a wizen, dried up creature, with a face seamed like a frozen apple and a figure bent with the weight of years. His eyes, though, glowed in a dangerous fashion, and the shaking finger which he pointed at me destroyed my composure. At loss for a reply, I sat gazing in open-mouthed astonishment, till the apparation, still spluttering from the first attack now went on with unabated violence: — Do you realize the enormity of your crime, you

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16 The Anynial of end open right against the mountain-side. The only weapon he could find that he thought would answer the purpose, was an article of kitchen furniture commonly known as a potato- masher. With this under his pillow, Master Johnny thought himself pretty safe. All went well until late in the night, when he was awakened by the approach of stealthy footsteps. Peer- ing out into the moonlight, Johnn} saw a dark object gliding slowly down the mountain directly toward his own room, and seeming to stop, now and then, to sniff t he air as though an agreeable scent met its nostrils. Fully convinced that the monster intended to make a supper of him, the poor boy lay with chattering teeth, gripping the potato-masher in one hand, while ith the other he held the blanket fast around him, to protect himself against the attack. Nearer and nearer the bear approached till, Johnny afterward declared, he could feel its hot breath upon his cheek, but instead of springing at his throat as he had expected it would do, it onl}- glanced at him for a moment, then moved leisurely along, and Johnny soon heard it drinking from the spring beyond the house. Now, Johnny is not usually a selfish bo} ' , but he afterwards owned that he never in his life prayed so earnestly for anything as he did that night that the bear would go hy the next house and eat up poor Tommy Lewis and would leave him for the next time, when he devoutly hoped to be somewhere else. When Johnny awoke next morning, his first question was: Did he eat him up ? Then in answer to our amazed inquire- as to what he meant, his story was told. We all ran out to see if the monster left any tracks by which he might be followed, but to our great disappointment we could find nothing but some hog tracks. Then the truth dawned upon us. All day long poor Johnny has heard nothing but countless allusions to the farmer boy who could not tell a bear from a hog. To do him justice, however, I think he is very glad, in spite of the teas- ing, that it was only a hog, and that Tommy Lewis is still alive and well. Aug. 2 ist. -To-day we have to bid goodbye to Fern Glen and its charming haunts till next summer, when we hope to return. We expected to stay several daj-s longer, but this morning an accident happened which will compel us to leave

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IS 77 1? Annual of lazy little idiot, willing to defraud the world of the charming writings of Goldsmith, in order to save jj ' (?z the trouble of study- ing them? Ah! I have no patience with you! And, now, recognize in me the Spirit of that Shaw, doomed to walk the earth as man until students shall cease reviling it. Year af- ter year girls have dragged me further from my celestial home, but this class of ' 96 has almost destroyed forever my hopes of rest and peace. ' ' There was high tragedy in his tones, and I wondered in a shame-faced way, how many hundreds of times I had pulled him back b} insulting epithets heaped on the book which he guarded. Soon, however, he recovered and continued in his former uncomplimentary fashion. You reviling nuisance, come with me and see those men you have been hating, come and feel your own littleness in the presence of those master minds. The dwarf was growing eloquent, and — or was it my imagination ? — - seemed to be increasing in size and dignity. He strode toward the volume of Shaw that had fallen to the ground, pointed to it and said in commanding tones, Kick it. In spite of the tirade I had just heard, this exactly ex- pressed my sentiments toward the prostrate gentleman, and I willingly endowed him with a far from gentle tap, expecting to see him fly to the four corners of the room. Picture my aston- ishment then, when the book grew and changed in a swift, terrible fashion, enclosing me, and shutting out the view of the old room, till suddenty I found myself deep in a dungeon cell. Damp grey walls arose on every side, and from the bar- red window a few struggling rays of light fell across the figure of a man seated cobbler-fashion on the floor busy making tag laces. Hopelessness was plainly written in every line of the stooped form and in the sad, emaciated face, but a grand pa- tience and fortitude was stamped on the broad brow. A woman and five children crouched in ragged wretchedness in a far cor- ner, and by the worker ' s side sat a young girl, her wide, un- seeing eyes turned upward toward the light. ' ' As I walked through the wilderness of this world I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, murmured the dwarf in my ear, but I needed not the words from the once despised Pilgrim ' s Progress ' ' to assure me of the identity of this prisoner. Tears