Millersville University - Touchstone Yearbook (Millersville, PA)

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Class Prophecy. FLORENCE R. REISER. TT IS Class Day at the Millersville Normal. The month is June; the year, nineteen hundred and eighteen. In the chapel two hundred and three Seniors are giving their history, prophecy, statistics, etc., in the presence of a large audience of relatives, friends, and alumni. The ushers hover noiselessly about the chapel doors; the audience keep up a perpetual waving and rustling of fans, for the day is hot. Among the crowd in the gallery, members of the class of nineteen-three look down with intensest interest, for they are no longer Alumni battling with the cold, cruel world, but Seniors come to live over again the life of fifteen years ago. Now the exercises are over. Parents and other attachments are being towed around in every direction by the elegantly dressed Seniors, who seem to be alarmingly unconscious of the heat. The Alumni visit their favorite spots of the campus, steal into the observatory, music buildings, glance up at the residences of the various professors and other edifices which have been erected since their departure. Twilight approaches. But twilight will soon be replaced by a cheerful moon. Many now follow the path to the dining hall, where dinner is to-day served at seven. But who compose the jovial crowd of about twenty who are moving in an opposite direction? The students explain to those who are with them that they are the famous class of nineteen hundred and three, the first class of the new course. They have returned to celebrate their fifteenth anniversary, and are this evening being entertained by Miss---------at the Waldorf Hotel. But let us follow these apparently very interesting persons to their destination. Past beautiful residences, fraterinty houses (for Millersville is now a typical college town), this class wends its way to the Waldorf. On the piazza many stout Japanese lanterns flutter over-

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22 THE HAMMER. leaning toward essayists and is at present engaged in making an exhaustive study of Herbert Spencer, are all familiar subjects, and extend beyond my bounds, since this is simply a history of the past. Grover Cleveland has shown a remarkable friendliness towards his rival, William Jennings Bryan. Bennie has been so unstable in his affections as to make it unwise and impracticable for me to commit myself upon that subject. Florence from Bismarck and Miss Hobach (H6bd), our latest acquisition, vie with one another in modesty and pianistic excellence, and last and most interesting and most noticeable, I pronounce the name of Janetta Wertz, who, like the widow’s barrel, never faileth, though on one occasion, tradition has it, though 1 can barely realize it, she failed—a physician was immediately summoned. In conclusion, let me say that our class meetings have ever been models of parliamentary excellence, which it would have been well for the other classes to behold. They have ever been characterized by the most perfect unity. No contention has ever marred their placid flow. They have been occasions of great social enjoyment and good will. And now, having done with levity, dear classmates, and all others, let me say in all sincerity that we have ever treated one another with all possible consideration as ladies and gentlemen; we have ever aided and encouraged one another in difficulty, and by mutual interests and ideals been drawn together in the closest bonds of truest, noblest friendship. We have been few, but we have been united and powerful. I feel safe in saying that we shall have left our impress not only upon our Alma Mater as a powerful class intellectually, and in athletics and the pursuit of the beautiful in art and melody and nature, but that we shall stand out in educational history pioneers of a noble cause; that we shall ever live in the hearts of our professors and teachers a grateful, tender memory. We have fought a good fight and won. May the future hold in store for each and all of us, after we depart from out these memory-haunted halls, as much pleasure and as rich promises of success as has the past.

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24 THE HAMMER. head. Miss---------meets them at the door and takes them into the reception hall, where the ladies pile their evening wraps on a table and the gentlemen dispose of their hats. Dinner is waiting, so they repair unceremoniously to the spacious dining room, where they partake of a very elaborate dinner. After dinner they go to the parlor, where they engage in talking, laughing, playing and singing until late. Some one suggests that the class history be read, so the class historian reads the following: There is one of our number who while at school had always shown a disposition to inquire into the why and wherefore of every affair. After leaving school he had strange wishes to go deep into scientific pursuits, to contend with nature and wrest from her some secret or some power which had hitherto been held from mortal grasp. His chief aim was to produce new forms of vegetable life, to create an insect of nothing higher in the living scale. Although not having up to this time secured his desired result, he has given to the world some marvelous scientific discoveries. He is well known throughout the country as the scientist, Benjamin K. Lehman, of Denver. The class has produced one great author. She was known to us during the Senior year as one who was thoroughly fascinated by Kipling. It was her greatest pleasure to read and re-read his works all her leisure moments, to quote from him when illustrations were called for in grammar class. Upon leaving school she became, if possible, a more eager reader and student of Kipling, and finally decided that she, too, would write. Her first poems were published in the various magazines of the country, and everywhere attracted attention on account of their similarity to Kipling’s works. In 1810 there was an incomplete edition of her works published by the American Book Company. I have just been inofrined that a complete edition is shortly to issue from the press at Philadelphia. Miss Hemperly is at present living in Harrisburg, where she spends much of her time content in her comfortable library. In marked contrast are two others of our class, who after leaving school indulged more freely than ever in the social world. Miss Bess Jennings made her debut in Washington in 1905, and Miss Florence Ely in the year following in Cleveland. In brief,