Palo Alto High School - Madrono Yearbook (Palo Alto, CA)

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STAFF THE SENIOR CLASS DOROTHY E. NICHOLS...................Eclitor-in-Chief MISS COMO MONTGOMERY.....................Faculty Adviser BUSIN ESS M A N E M E X T GARRETT ELMORE NATHAN MOORE EDWARD WATERMAN SHIRLEY CHARLES ALDEX PROCTOR editorial staff ELIZABETH WALLACE CARLSHOUP LYSLE BLYTHE ERIC JORDAN MURIEL BELL ELSE LEISTNER CHARLES WATSON HALL WALKER •.. CONTRIBUTORS LAURA KENNEDY FRED HUGHES VIVIAN UMPHREYS WILLIAM HYDE .......................Photographer ...........................Art Work Graduation and Commencement come every year and so it is that we never realize what a tremendous event it is until we come to our own. Graduation is the common term we generally use, and yet Commence- ment is perhaps the better word. For although one short chapter is closed, a greater one is opened. There seems to be little outward difference between a college freshman and a high school senior. The change is more marked in the person who goes to work after graduation, and yet the difference is not conspicuous. 29

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% a certain extent. There were no regular weekly meetings of student body officers; only special “student councils’ called occasionally by the stu- dent body president. As a matter of fact very few were called. A board of auditors composed of ten members met weekly and passed on all money matters. It sometimes made a few regulations in regard to student activities. However, they had lit'.le to do with the latter branch. The treasurer, business manager, yell leader and property clerk did their work separately. Under the new system all the commissioners are ac- countable to the rest in the board’s weekly meetings. Xo one person is at the head of the government, but control is centered in a representative When with a last and wistful glance the weary day is gone, And purple shadows lengthen and grow dark, When all the earth in trembling silence waits The night, then hark! Under the hedge the cricket’s merry scrape, And from some neighboring yard a dog’s unreasoning growl, In the sparkling valley, list the city’s busy hum, While in the shadowy hills coyotes howl. In peaceful ease at last we lie While silver-liquid beams of moonlight fall in patches on the chambci floor. And welcome Sleep steals gently in To weight our eyelids—shut our eyes once more. Before our eyes there come sweet visions, kindly friends— Friends lost or dead, and brothers gone all pass in kind array, And laugh and talk and nod to us again As once they did in light of day. Sleep! Leave us this! This one hour of our lives When we may see again our past or read bright future’s rune— We pause not in the day, hut at this time— Sleep! Come not too soon. body of five. 28 D. E. N., T9.

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However this may be. the difference is there. One part of life is past, the training period is completed, and work begins. It is not quite a normal world that we go into. Classes before this of 1919 have passed into the great days and tasks of the war. We pass into the period of reconstruction, which is perhaps more trying, and surely less inspiring. The saddest chapter in our history, the chapter that we are ashamed of and that made for bitterness lasting almost to the present day. is the division in our history books entitled “Reconstruction” after the Civil War. 1 low many of us have really thrilled over the war days, and then have been glad we did not live in the days following. How many have said during the past year. “This is the time of all time to he living!” Can we say that of the years to come? Reconstruction is a wearisome business, and it often becomes a sordid 1 business. The world lias had a bright, too bright a dream of millenium after the war. It is now waking up to the fact that humanity seems as quarrelsome, as greedy as before. The natural result is a swing of the pendulum to utter dejection, a pessimism and lack of faith built on the shattered visions of the glory that never came. This is one of the things we must guard against. The world will never recover if it loses faith. Hope sustained 11s through the war: we must not lose it. To turn from the future to the past, we may look back upon our senior year and feel that it has been one of the best years of our lives. We have had a measure of responsibility toward school activities that we never felt in our under-class days, and there is a jov in that responsibility. We have had hard work, hut there has been a certain satisfaction that Comes from finishing—and a feeling that we knew how. And the class of 1919 is the first to hold a June graduation in the new high school. We have had only a few months in the new building, hut vve have appreciated them after three and a half years in the crowded old building. We will not conceal the fact that we leave even this beautiful building with joy. It has been a wonderful year, and the future is uncertain, hut we cannot help but be exceedingly glad to have completed these four years. Filled with memories of the greatest year in high school; and with a deep regret to leave the teachers who have guided us these four years, and to lose some of the friendships made, we turn our faces to the future and say FAREWELL. 30