Massachusetts College of Art and Design - Palette and Pen Yearbook (Boston, MA)

Page 11 text:

NOW that we have made a book of our own, and our thoughts have been published, we feel a certain embarrassed kinship with all the words of the world that have been printed since Gutenberg. Now the great books seem close to haunt us, the fat precious volumes, the book- worm holes and calfskin bindings, the intoxicating words, the fair white margins. We consider how bright they are, how shining, how incomparably exciting. And we feel abashed that we have asked the great deft presses to turn again in our behalf. Our pictures are not by Dore, neither is the writing by Thoreau ; we feel it keenly. And yet perhaps all may be forgiven for that our excuse was the ancient un- deniable one that we wanted to be known of all men, that we too de- sired to live forever. This yearbook, then, is the story of our class, the record of our golden days in the intimate close-packed detail of autobiography. If we hope at the same time to tell the larger story of life in an art school, it can only be as we succeed in this particular tale of our class. Before you who read can picture the general life you must first see us in faith- ful replica, our clubs and teachers and enthusiasms. When we are only names remembered dimly, when all that remain to speak for us are these stiff words across the page, these silent photographs of us who were never still, you must yet divine our pulse of life. You must see how we spent our heart and brain on history notebooks and anatomical diagrams, how we watched the sun slant across the dark noon of as- semblies, how we never could decide between cathedrals and coffee-ads. These things are blurred and fragrant in our memories now, and shin- ing like a high light, but nothing is lost or diminished. And if we should ask one last favor of our faculty, it would be that they and all they stood for might never change; that forever Nofretete might be held in honor; that the old stories might be told over again and again.

Page 10 text:

' ' The Yellow Slicker by Otis Philbrick

Page 12 text:

CHARLES EDWARD NEWELL President M.S.A., State Director oj Art Education I ' he delicate task of maintaining the spirit of our school against the tide of restless and uncertain years is President Newell’s. With pageants and by-laws, medals and mascots, and the myriad delicate threads of custom he binds each class to the school tradition. It is thus, by his constant devotion to the details of the scene, that theorderedgraciousnessof tradi- tional Boston has been made to flower here.