Milton Academy - Yearbook (Milton, MA)

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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 ,

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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

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although the thought in the exposition is usually of excellent quality. E. D. '35 sugges'ts that We study and try to imitate Hazlitt's prose style. There are indications that the girls who Write poetry have studied with keen interest the forms of modern poetry. I suspect that the same is true of the authors of stories and descriptions. But in the expository writing one feels that the interest has centered in develop- ment of the thought at the expense of the prose style, although the excellence of the thought deserves more distinguished expression. This lack of perfection of prose style as compared With English School magazines may be due to the fact that American prose, With some marked exceptions, lacks the distinction and elegance of English prose. In reading present day periodicals I often feel that I can tell in the first few' paragraphs whether the author is an American or an Eng- lishman. The English are master craftsmen, using their tool, the English language, with ease, skill, and power. They can make it serve their will. Their prose is clear, forcible, flexible. distinguished. The British feel that a mastery of prose style can best, or perhaps only, be achieved through the long exacting discipline in the classics which the English boys and girls receive in their schools. This may well be true, it surely produces masters of English prose style. But I like to think that there are other ways, and one may be a Willingness to study with an equally exacting discipline the best English prose. and to strive to learn the secrets of its excellence. I have regretted all my life that I was not trained when young in a skilful use of this beauti- ful tool, instead of using it clumsily and with pain, as at this moment. It has occurred to me that it might be interesting to try to ar- range through E. D. '35 an exchange of magazines with one of the English Public Schools, and compare their achievement with ours. We might have the satisfaction of finding our creative talent superior, and could at the same time see the evolutionary stages of their prose style. We might even detect some Hazlitt in the making. What do ' -7 the Magus editors for 1937-38 think of this suggestion. Sarah Storer Goodwin NATURE TRIUMPHANT The buildings are standing in ruin, Slowly decaying with time, While the ivy gently but firmly Chokes them in their prime. In the prime of their sleeping they're strangled F-or all is in silence Without, Except for the Wind in the forests Sweeping around and about. the megus eeee fefeeee i 1i1 i. - i.l.