Norfolk High School - Milestone Yearbook (Norfolk, NE)

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is THE MILESTONE. wasp sting, will relieve the pain. Much as we dislike inud we should be inconvienced if there were no way of having the soil and water unite. Not only the birds build their nests of mud, but from time immemorial man has been living in homes made from the soil in one form or another. Perhaps caves wfere the most common. This kind of dwelling has played no small part in history. How' many royal heads have found a safe retreat in caves? Though King David died in such splendor, yet a cave afforded him a hiding place from the enraged Saul. In later history, when Scotland’s enemies were seeking the noble Bruce, he rested secure in a cave, across the opening of which a spiders web served for portcullis. The ancestors of the Pueblo Indians dwelt in caves in the mountain cliffs. Here they passed peaceful, happy lives until discovered by the Spaniards. Their homes were reached by rude ladders, which could be removed, making them secure from all intruders. The adobe huts of the southwest are examples of man’s ingenuity in the use of mud. Some of these huts have been standing for more than two hundred years. You are all acquainted with the “dug out” as seen here in the west. Little by little they are passing away, yet they formed dwellings for the hardy pioneers. In their places are to be found more pretentious yet not more happy homes. The children of Erin’s Isle would fare badly on cold fresty mornings if Mother Nature had not provided the extensive peat bogs for them. These bogs have been forming

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1VIUD. Jane Hawden. A teacher once asked her class for a definition of dust. A diminutive maiden answered: “Please, ma'am, it's mud with the water squeezed out.” It is well known by the average small child that mud can be obtained by mixing water and dust. What wonderful pies, puddings, delicious cakes, in fact every thing ever made by careful housewives are concocted by the little ones in their play-houses. As the child advances in years, outgrows mud pies, it begins to have an ab-horence for mud. It forgets how joyfully, after a summer shower, the harefeet had sought the muddiest parts of the road, and thought nothing of soiled garments till met by mother’s reproachful look. The animals, however, do not work in the mud for amuse-ement. Whittier speaks of “The black wasp’s cunning way, mason of his walls of clay, ’ and also tells us that, “The muskrat plied the mason’s trade, and tier by tier his mud walls laid.” Different animals, as well as man, use mud as an application for wounds and bruises. Those who have had experience will remember how readily mud, when applied to a hornet or

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TFIE MILESTONE. 19 slowly through countless ages and are now doing their part in Nature’s great plan. Among the North American Indians mud forms an important paid of the apparel. No matter what the business of the Indian, whether to Helds where glory waits in ambush with countless scalps for her favorite, or where a dusky maiden, surrounded by invisible cupids with fiery darts allures him, or when mourning the departure of his friend to the Happy Hunting (tround of the Hereafter, he always finds some soil of suitable color to express his purpose, so that “He who runs may read.” In California is a tribe known as the Digger Indians. One of the peculiarities of this tribe is its fondness for the blue soil of this region. It is said if a child commences to eat the clay, the habit grows as does the opium or arsenic habit. The child may be deprived of parents, home and playmates, yet if given the blue clay will be perfectly contented. The settlers say: “Once a clay eater always a clay eater.” Have you ever considered how dependent we are upon the dust of the earth? The most wonderful of all its products is man. “The Lord Hod formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” Even the last resting place of man is with the earth. Man, with his wonderful achievements in the literary and scientific world, will return again to the dust from which he sprung. “All that tread the globe are but a handful to the