Mukwonago High School - Arrow Yearbook (Mukwonago, WI)

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 T II E ARRO W—PAGE EIGHTEEN Mukwonago is a village of homes. I see more of them than anything else. No filthy smoke pollutes the air and the streets are not thickly crowded. At the upper end I see a depot and a small colony of buildings. A mas- sive, grayish-white High School looms up as a banner of a regiment might. I take the glass, and I am pleased with what I have seen. It is comfortable and beautiful even in its narrow life. —EMMET SHERIDAN. ------------------► THE MAN ON THE STAIRS It was a cold, dull night in April when the sharp, sighing wind and the throbbing, patter- ing rain muffled the roar of the long, swift trains as they rushed into the gloom of the Union depot, carrying their cosmopolitan bur- dens which were nearing a common destina- tion. The coaches halted, and a weary, protesting multitude poured forth, thronging up to the steps of the station with impatient haste. The lights of the depot streamed warmly out upon the jostling travelers, shining radiantly upon one of them, one who held himself a lit- tle aloof, outwardly oblivious of the rain. It was this one who passed hurriedly out of the brilliant band of light which had indicated him as plainly as the footlights outline the star performer, and on into the building. There he ascended a second flight of steps until he stood beside the gigantic clock which, day after day, informed the passers-by of the flying time. Below him lay the interior of the Union depot, each crevice of whose walls was plain- ly visible in the glow of the lamps. Below him were people, many, many people—hurrying, al- ways hurrying. Below him lay the tragedy of life—tragedy so mixed with happiness that it was not always recognized. But it was there. Sadly the silent observer admitted that it was there. Tragedy in the face of the little bent Italian woman who stood cringing beneath the quick, stern directions of one of the guards. Something in that furrowed, grief-stricken face, something in the dark, sorrowful, beautiful eyes made the man by the clock understand. “There has been a death,” he said, “a death, and she is going back.” He turned again to the clock, wondering, conjecturing about the scenes it must have witnessed. And then the man beside the clock, because he was a poet and an author, began to imagine, weaving the fragments of lives which he saw below him into short yet fanciful biographies of the people there. Had the clock ever done it, he wondered. Directly beneath him stood a group of men in comfortable overcoats and silk hats; dia- monds glittered on their fingers, and most of them carried canes. They were financiers, judged the man on the stairs. He could hear them talking about investments. One of them mentioned “watered stock ’ and the others laughed. “We won’t be caught,” said one dis- tinctly. “Besides, when we’ve got what we want and it begins to look dangerous we can get out.” The rest of the words the author above them did not hear, until one of the group said. “I’m old-fashioned, I suppose, but this isn’t straight and I don’t want to be in it.” With new interest the unseen observer looked at the face of the man who had just spoken. It was a rugged face, with clear cut features, and the eyes were blue, honest blue. The poet looked again and saw the face of a boy. A boy whom everyone trusted, a boy who was depend- able, a boy who would not hesitate to say, “but this isn’t straight and I don’t want to be in it.” The financiers moved away and the author saw that two ragged little children were stand- ing near the stairs. He could not hear what they were saying, but he imagined that they had come there to wait for a father and a mother who had been away on a brief, hard- earned vacation. Expectancy was written in each homely little face. An elderly gentleman and a young woman were approaching the ticket office. As they came nearer, the man on the stairs heard the girl say impatiently, “Oh yes. father, I do know how you feel. We’ve talked it over so many, many times. I have talent; isn’t it only right that I go away to develop it? I do not want to live here with the money you are giving me. I want my own. The money 1 have earned in my profession.” A look of torture crossed the countenance of the man beside her. “It’s all right,” he said huskily, “but oh, I shall miss you, Elizabeth!” A middle-aged man and his wife crossed over to the stairs and stopped there for a moment. “This is the first real vacation we’ve had to- gether for three years,” they said happily, “isn’t it fine?” They laughed joyously as they passed out through the swinging doors.

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T H E A R R () w—pa ;e seventeen M- Where is our patriotism? Haven’t we any? Are we so callous that the sight of Old Glory, as it ripples in the breeze, does not send a thrill through our hearts and make us long to defend it, as we think of all it stands for? If we are, then we are not worthy to be called citizens of U. S. and are worse than “the man without a country” whom we exiled because of a few hasty words spoken in a mo- ment of passion, but regretted all his life. If not, then let us respond to the call to arms and march on to victory. Let us uphold our honor and prove to the world that our glorious U. S. is one of the greatest nations in the world. —ELIZABETH BULLION, ’18. ---------------- - PESTS I had always considered a dog the greatest pest in the world, but if possible I hated them more after we moved ne'xt door to “that dog.” It began to let us know it existed about ten minutes after the first load of furniture had arrived, by going to the porch where the men had carefully deposited a pile of curtains and after carefully selecting one of the best in the pile and. taking it to its own porch, solemn- ly began to tear it to pieces. Not wishing to come in close contact with the dog or have a quarrel the first day in our new neighborhood, we let the event pass peacefully by. Nothing of great importance happened for the next couple of days although our two cats, a couple of chickens, the door mat and several other small articles disappeared. On the third day, after carefully cleaning a pair of white shoes, I set them in the sun to dry. After forgetting them for half a day I sent my sister out to get them, but they were gone. It was that dog again. I would have given anything to have been able to throw a stone at least ten feet and throw it straight. The owner of this dog was a genuine type of “maiden lady” and would not hear of having the dog killed. What were we to do? After living there about two weeks we had just about decided that life near that dog would be unbearable, when I, who happened to be home alone at the time, looked up to see a man who was evidently a tramp as evidenced by his long, long, ragged beard and torn and dirty clothes, standing in the doorway. Fright- ened, I stood up and started for the door but was unable to reach it before the man had entered. What was I to do? Crash! What would that dog do next? He had attempted to jump through the kitchen window and in doing so had knocked a number of milk bottles on the floor. The tramp did not stop to find the cause of the crash but ran out of the door and down the street as fast as he could go. The dog was soon at his heels. In a few minutes the dog returned with the tramp’s hat in his mouth. The dog was of some use after all and from that time on I decided there were greater pests than dogs. —MILDRED WEST. m------------------ - MIKAVONAGO One warm afternoon during the past sum- mer I was riding along a dusty road with a friend of mine. He was driving the car and it just chanced that as we came to the summit of a large hill, I should look around and then ask him to stop. With my arm extended I showed him the stream below us, the rolling hills, the zig-zlag of many fences and the streets of a little village lying peacefully and mistily under the beams of golden sunshine. We had a field glass which was very power- ful and it was not long before everything was distinct and familiar to our eyes. As I took the glass and looked through it a feeling came to me as though, for the first time, I was view- ing a quaint old French village and then that picture faded from my mind, leaving an after- glow' which filled me with content and calm. At the lower end of the town I can perceive a mill around which is a stream of water that gets its source from the lakes that appear sunk- en in the distance. The water goes on and on, past a gaunt black railroad bridge and then in a winding, careless fashion through the level country belowr me. It seems that one side of the village is bounded by the railroad, one by the sparkling waters of the lake and the rest by woods and open country. It is stretched out in the shape of a huge club, much longer than it is wide and with two streets that carry the main traffic. The streets are shaded by many trees, which are a dark green compared to the lighter hue of the grass about the houses. In the center of the village is a bandstand and a grass plot; and in an irregular manner about them I can see the business houses of the place. They look old and time worn from up here.

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-T H E A R R () W—i a sk nineteen The bent, sorrowing little woman from Italy was returning. Timidly she approached a guard. “I have lost my way,” she said tremul- ously, “where do I go?” The officer, touched perhaps by the appeal in the voice, told her slowly, carefully. And when he had finished the Italian turned her soft dark eyes upon him. “God bless you,” she said reverently, and the words were as a bene- diction. Below the man by the clock, as before, lay the Union depot, but within its vast walls he saw only the little foreigner pouring forth her gratitude. And feeling that he had witnessed something holy, the man on the stairs arose and passed out into the night. m------------------- THE AEROPLANE IN THE WAR It seems almost impossible to realize the benefits of the aeroplane in modern warfare. In the earlier history a cannon was the most effective machine of defense on the ships, and the old musket on land. Now an innumerable list of devices are in use. There are several important ones and those are namely, machine guns, bombs, and in reality the most important of them all is the aeroplane. Now the term aeroplane includes all air ma- chines which are supported by planes. That is, there are different types of aeroplanes, as the biplane, monoplane, triplane and several modified ones similar to these. Then again there is a division of machines used for differ- ent purposes for land and water fighting. The aeroplane’s usefulness has never been realized until this great war began, or definite- ly speaking it has never before had a chance to prove its usefulness and efficiency. Now' the most modern and effective model of war- fare is in hydroplanes, and biplanes. It wras stated by one of England’s greatest generals that one well manned aeroplane was worth one hundred fighting men in the field. Roughly speaking an aeroplane concentrates the efficiency of one hundred men into one, ■ thereby greatly strengthening the effective- ness of an army or navy, whichever it may be. The mode of fighting from an aeroplane is very interesting, especially the action of the machine gun and bomb dropping devices. The machine gun is mounted upon the hood of the machine and shoots through the fast revolving propeller. The way this is accomplished is that the ma- chine gun works with the engine and the gun is timed to shoot just as the blades of the propeller are passed. There are thousands of aeroplanes perform- ing the separate functions required of them in the war in Europe and in a matter of fact will in our war with the German allies. The greatest battles of the w’ar have been fought by the fleets of air vessels. The large German dirigible, which caused so much fear in Lon- don during the early months of the war. has gone out of existence and small light crafts are taking its place. The dirigible was a large mark, a magnificent mark for the guns on land and also a clumsy framew'ork of steel. The aeroplanes of today are exceedingly light, simple and durable. The most important factor about an aeroplane is its durability. It was customary some time ago to speak of the aero- plane as our frail aeroplanes, but now it is dif- ferent. A load of thousands of pounds may rest on any part of a machine. A man has no more effect walking on the planes of a machine than on the ground itself. The motors are ex- ceedingly light and powerful, for example a one hundred horse power engine only weighs from 150 to 200 pounds and range from three to twelve cylinders. The motor, as it naturally would seem, is the heart of an aeroplane and if once the motor stops, the other mechanism is practically useless, even in the hands of a good pilot. Flying an aeroplane seems a foolhardy idea, but if one would ask a person from France which would be the safest place to be, he would say in the air. The aeroplane industry of the world has increased since its infancy, twro-fold that of automobiles and it has certain- ly accomplished wonders for the world during this period. m--------