Milton Academy - Yearbook (Milton, MA)

Page 15 text:

UITUHIHLS When someone asks, What class are you in? and you, be- ing of the privileged few, reply the First Class, do you add, It won't be long now, with visions of cast-out school- books supplying next winter's fuel? If so, school has just been to you a twelve-year supply of bitter pills, taken each night before re- tiring as a brain stimulant adequate to get your mind through the following day alive. Now you have no longer need for such a pre- scription and so the effects of the doses wear off and you settle back comfortably to watch life and its bright vistas of infinite enjoyment come floating by. Your time will be your own at last, to spend sleep- ing all day after an endless round of frivolous gaiety, and later with a moderately well-to-do husband, you will have little to worry about. How much better it is to look at these past twelve years as a box of assorted appetizers out of which three or four varieties have suited your taste better than others. In the lower school you learned how to remove the lid of the box, a.nd folding back the fiaps, you found the first layer of tid-bits. During the following three years, you experi- mented with this layer, tasting a sample of each comparatively simple variety, and in a like manner. by the end of three more years, you had tasted the more complex offerings of the bottom layer. Now you turn from this box, anxious to find another larger one which will contain only the highest quality of the preferred varieties. In short-hasn't school stimulated at least one interest for you that you are eager to develop? It may be some poetry you have stud- ied, some music or art, it may be a science or language, but surely there is some subject that has inspired you. I can hear you sighing with disgust, Another of these career women. No, you're wrong. You don't have to make it your life work, there are many classes and discussion clubs that married women join, and such outside in- terests do make life so much more interesting and exciting. So let's not fritter away the next few years waiting for fate to enliven our ex- istence. It's up to us to start to decide now how we are going to make the future unregrettable. S. A. S. '37 the rnagus page thirteen

Page 14 text:

DAPHNE BOWEN WITHINGTON Milton, Massachusetts En'tered.1931. Plans for next year: debut in Boston. Pin girl: 1931 once: 1932 three times. Class Representative: 1932, 1935. Librarian: 1937. Athletics: Lacrosse Team: 1931, 19323 Basket- ball Team: 1935, 1936, 19375 Baseball Team: 1935, 1936. Dramatics: Jester's Purse, 19323 Eric the Hunchback, 19333 As You Like It, 1936: The Importance of Being Earnest, 1937. Talks: Police Patrol, Infantile Paralysis: Stone- henge. Glee Club: 1935, 1936, 1937. Prize for Improvement in Scholarship: 1936. page twelve fnagus

Page 16 text:

Every year the Margaret May Ward Historical Prize is awarded to a member of the First Class wvho writes the best essay. This year the emphasis was placed on research in American History rather than upon literary interest. The prize-Winning essay, by Sarah Brewer, was .a very able speculation on the probable attitude which Hamilton and Jefferson, if they were alive today, would take toward contem- porary problems. The Magus board takes great pleasure in announcing the election of Martha Crocker as next year's Editor-in-chief of the Magus. We wish her and the 1937-1938 Board the best of luck. Mrs. Kingsley Porter entertained the Magus board at Elmwood, the home of James Russell Lowell in Cambridge. After tea she told us about her personal friend, the poet A. E. We had a most delight- ful time and wish to express our great appreciation of Mrs. Porter's kindness. This year we have been very fortunate to have two such excellent critics for the earlier numbers of the Magus. We again thank Mrs. Julia Stackpole and Elizabeth Dewart. We are delighted to present in the June issue an article by Miss Goodwin, significant not only for the Magus, but for all American prose writing. AMERICAN PROSE. STYLE In the March Magus, Elizabeth Dewart KE. D. ,357, writing from England, makes in her Review of that issue an arresting comment. In comparing the Magus with the English Public School magazines, with which she is familiar, she finds the Magus superior in creative talent, the contributions spontaneous and sincere. not laboured fmark the British spellingj. She finds humor, fantasy, serious refiection. But, continuing the comparison, she says. The Magus lacks a certain scholarly finish and a desire for conciseness and perfection in prose style which is .... a pleasure to read in the English Public School mag- azines. . . .I should like to see the essay form more used with a definite attempt at a clear concise prose style. ...Nowadays a good prose style is rare, compelled as we are to read so much th.at is journalese and slangyf' She has here expressed my chief criticism of school writing and school magazines. The authors achieve vividness, show imagination, arouse interest in their descriptive and narrative writing, and in their poetry, but they do not show the same artistic standard in exposition, page fourteen fnagus ,