Norfolk High School - Milestone Yearbook (Norfolk, NE)

Page 17 text:

History of the Class of '98. MABLE FRANCES COLLAMER. Amid the merry pealing 6f school bells, on the first Monday in September, lst)4, a large class of bright pupils entered the Norfolk High School. As usual a grand rush was made for the back seats, but as “two masses of matter can not occupy the same space at the same time,” we at last decided to sit where we could. We were model freshmen, bearing patiently the tyranny of tin seniors and the slurs of the juniors. Our work, which was taken up and completed at different periods during the year, consisted of arithmetic, book-keeping, algebra, mental arithmetic, composition, grammar, civics, German and Latin. Never has there been a freshman class to equal that of 94. Every little while, we had to “orate” much to our dismay, and as we worked and toiled to make the room beautiful in our class colors, pink and white, all the credit we received for it was a remark read to us from the sophomore paper: “The room looked beautiful last month in faded pink and dirty white.” We were fortunate in several things: First. The eighth grade occupied our places in the room and re- ceived a bounteous share of slights, etc., from the upper classes. Though we recited every day, our number was so great that each individual recited every third day and like other bright freshmen we studied every third day. Time passed and the patient freshmen became sophomores. This is, perhaps, the most trying year in the high school, for a sophomore does not care to associate with a freshman and the juniors and “noble, potent and reverend” seniors do not care to notice him. We studied algebra, rhetoric, general history. Latin, zoology, and geology, and so smart did we become, all the other classes wore blue “specks” to enable them to bear the brightness. Certain days were set apart for feasting and various are the eatables partaken of in that one year. Also many short visits to the city became necessary to the sophomores during each day. The fall of ’% found us in our places as brilliant juniors, ready to take up our work, consisting of worrying the freshmen, ignoring the sophomores, assistin': the seniors and extolling ourselves above all others and incidentlv studying. Our studies were geometry, geology. botany. Latin and American literature. Much sport was obtain-