Maryville College - Chilhowean Yearbook (Maryville, TN)

Page 23 text:

r ■ II IL IH 1 vw If A N i... Samuel Tvndale Wilson, President MOONLIGHT AND MOONSHINE They tell me that the theme and motive of The Chilhowean ot 1950 is Moonshine. Even a veteran Maryvillian feels a certain indefinable awe overcoming him when he is asked to deal, even briefly with so momentous a theme! Even moonlight may bring a real thrill to a person. For example, there is the moonlight illuminating the storied Acropolis, at Athens, Greece. We secured cards of admission to the Acropolis, on a night of the full moon, to see that sacred spot by the bewitching magic of Grecian moonlight. And what glorious thrills came to us in that pale moonlight as we walked through the gloomy Parthenon; and then across where the gold and ivory statue of Athena Promachos once stood; and on by the ghostly ruins of thc Erechtheion. And what mysterious thrills tingled in our hearts when, looking heavenward, we basked in the moonbeams that sifted down from Selene, the goddess of the Moon, upon whose face the Greeks t;azed with worshipful reverence from this very hilltop two and three millenniums ago, just as we were doing on this holy night of ours. But approach our theme a little closer yet. On many vacation occasions the writer and his family spent several glorious weeks in camp by Maple Spring on the Chilhowee Mountains; and there by day or by night they were bathed in the golden sunlight and the silvery moonlight that God pours out upon Hii everlastmg hills. Ah! who can adequately portray the glories of moonlight on Chilhowee ' s lofty moun- tains? But even moonlight on Chilhowee is, after all, by no means as thrilling as is moonshine on College hill. To prove the truth of this sweeping and catagorical statement, all that is necessary is an appeal to the opinion and testimony of any old Maryville student. But why desecrate by inadequacy of treatment so sacred a subject .is is moonshine at Marwille, when everyone knows that justice can never be done to so transcendent a theme. The saddest hour in a Mary- villian ' s life comes at the close of his last commencement day. As I approached my dormitory room at the moonlight close of the day of my graduation, my heart paid its involuntary and necessary tribute to moon- shme by immeasurable sorrow that it was all over with me, that the romance and the glory of college moonshming were gone from me, presumably for evermore. Sic transit gloria miindil But the supreme tribute that hundreds of old Maryville College men and women have paid to the glories of moonshine was paid when, sooner or later, they sought out the one that moonshined with them in college days, and, with the efficient help of an obsequious county court clerk and a kindly clergyman, they organized a life-partnership concern where moonshining might go on forever! Samuel Tvndale ilson