Paxton High School - Reflector Yearbook (Paxton, IL)

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6 THE PAXTON HIGH SCHOOL REFLECTOR JUNIOR-SENIOR BANQUET. Juniors and Seniors mingle and for the last time as a united body the upper classmen take meat. For the last time they gather about the festive board and laughter light dies off when each communes within himself how “so soon and it is sped. A solemn hush falls over all and the life that is whirls away on the wings of the storm, to the life that is to be. Speaker after speaker stands to the silence and acknowledges its respect. Speaker after speaker humors and moves his hearers. Speaker after speaker sits to their loud approval; and then the hand-writing on the wall, soon and it is sped”; and the ominous, throbbing hush. Seniors and Juniors have met. Henceforth, the strands of their lives run separately for they have come to the parting of the ways and have supped at the house which stands in the ways where all enter, but where each goes out his own appointed door. Never was there such a banquet. In the annals of high school life there stands no equal. This banquet was a banquet by itself. The prevailing spirit seemed tempered with something more than class spirit, something more than high school custom, something greater than friendlly gathering; for the years of their life spent each in each, have bound the rugged edges of tneir characters into the perfect figure, sinewed of honor and crowned with an undying fidelity to their Alma Mater and its interpreters. The following is the program rendered after the serving of the elaborate and sumptuous menu: Howard McCracken .............................................. Toastmaster Address of Welcome .................................................... Irene Richards Response ................................................. Joseph Gourley Funny Side of School Life ................................... Merrie Mill's Loss and Gain ........................................... Walter Nelson Gain and Loss............................................ Edwin Johnson “And Paintful Pleasure Turns to Pleasing Paine” (Spenser’s Faerie Queene) ............................................ Mattie Apland Book Knowledge and Common Sense.........................John Karl Moffett Reading ................................................ Lucy Frankl.n Reading ............................................... Esther Engstro.n Vocal Solo—Don’t You Mind the Sorrows (Eugene Cowles).......Marie McRill

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The Paxton High School Reflector Volume V. MAY, 1909 Number VIII. 1905 SU'flrrtnr iuuu a 'HIS, the Senior number of the Reflector, marks the end of the fifth volume of our High School paper. Through periods of varying degrees of success, the files have gradually grown, until now we can without attributing undue dignity, say that the publication has had something of a history. In looking over the files, we find that the first number was issued in February, 1905, since which time it has made its appearance each month. The records show that, as a financial venture, the first volume was not a success; but that the following year, under the exceptionally efficient business management of Will Lateer, all past indebtedness was paid, and a small balance remained. The subscription price has been fifty cents, with a charge of five cents for single copies, until this year, when the price of annual subscriptions was raised to seventy-five cents, and that of single copies to ten cents. Previous to this year, however, the size of the paper has been eight pages, with an occasional twelve-page number, while now, corresponding to the change in price, the size of the paper has increased to twelve pages. The year of 1907-08 marks the advent of the present policy of having alternate class and general numbers, and during the first year of this policy, we find the classes bearing the expense of a cover, for previous numbers had appeared without covers, except at such times as commencement or holiday numbers. A step forward which has been made this year is that finances have been so managed that each issue has had a neat, attractive cover. The credit for the conception of the idea of our having a High School paper may be attributed to William Glen, ’06, and Gordon Overstreet, 06, since they, with the assistance of John T. Vansant, as faculty manager, piloted the new venture through the five numbers which made their appearance the first year Some interest may be afforded by recalling something of the contents of the Commencement number of Volume I. The space is largely consumed by the report of the Second Annual Debate, which was won that year by the Athenaeums, the speech of each debater being printed in full. A large cut of Pres. David Felmley, of the Illinois State Normal University, occupied prominent space, since he delivered the address for the class of ’05; and it is in this same issue that may be found the account of the first Junior-Senior Banquet. At that event twenty-six Juniors banqueted thirteen Seniors, from which figures, inference may be drawn as to the progress lately made in our school affairs. Some of the peculiarities of the earlier numbers, such as alphabet rhymes, class jokes, and poetry, varying as to quantity and quality, may still be found occasionally in spite of efforts which have been made to keep them in the back-ground. However, from the first issue there may be traced marked evidences of a purpose on the part of those in charge, to maintain a high standard, and to make the paper reflect the best elements of the life and activities of the school. The present issue marks an entire change in the form of the paper to the magazine form, which may be representative of the appearance of future numbers; but, however that may be. it is to be desired that the policy of management now exercised, may continue, that of demanding that our paper hold high its standard, encourage the noblest and highest ideals, and contain naught that will cause us to have any feeling other than pride when the publication goes out as our message to the public. V. E. DTTDMAN.

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THE PAXTON HIGH SCHOOL REFLECTOR 7 llmtr Haratimt Vacation! Yes, that word has been in your thoughts for some time There is a subtle thrill in the sunshine, a far-away call in the murmur of the breeze. The most diligent at times have looked clear ttirough their books with the X-ray vision of that gentle malady, the spring fever. Even the brick walls of the school have melted into transparency. Wiiat walk so thick as to entirely shut out the spirit of spring-awakened nature? Press your eyelids tight, if you will, but you can’t help seeing those clumps of trees at the brook side, with the bringht sunshine on tae tender, glossy green of their twinkling leaves. The grasses beneath the trees are snort as yet but not too short to vibrate with the magic wind that comes wandering across the prairie. As of old we know not whence it comem and whitner it goeth. It breathes the spirit of romantic unrest like that in the heart of youth. Tis a siren song that nature sings these days, a song both in sound and color. A siren song, I repeat, for while duties remain to be performed-, twere better your ears were sealed with wax like those of the mariners of I lysses, lest you be wrecked upon the rocks of examinations. But there will shortly come a time for all of you, I hope, when vacation will be here indeed. What will you do with it? Perhaps most of you will have that question decided for you, in part at least. The school books will be gathering dust on the closet shelf, but the lawn mower will be waiting for you. The lawn mower, of course, is but one of the many grim substitutes for Virgil’s Aeneid and dear old VT.Iliken and Gale. But for most of you the vacation will bring release from regular and pressing duties, leisure to spend your time more or less as you please. How will you spend it? No, I do not intend to map out a course of study for you. That would be as futile as to map out a stra ght path for the swallows be-for a storm. But I trust your vacation will not mean vacuity. And what I wish to talk to you about is the relation of books to brooks, of literature to landscapes Literature, I say. I have no reference here to light books for summer reading.” Such are likely to be so very light that you might better listen to the wind blowing through a knot-hole or let your thoughts soar skyward upon the wings of the thistle down. Eut, on the other hand, I am not advocating the reading of ponderous, untried works, the proper understanding of which would require you to carrv with you Webster’s Unabridged and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Not these but the fragments of literature which you have already studied, whose references and terminology are fairly familiar to you. Not so much now to know what the authors meant as what they felt. Some of you, perhaps, have been living under a delusion as to what a book is. You have supposed it to be paper and pasteboard. It is associated in your mind with dusty shelves, long imprisonment, and irksome restraint. But that is not a book at all—no more than a sheath is a sword, no more than your clothes are you. A book is a living voice, a perpetuated personality, a choice spirit waiting to be your constant companion—perhaps your guardian angel When you shoulder that gun or snatch up that fishing rod and set out for the fields and woods, why not put a little book in your pocket? In a package smaller than the bait-can you may have that which will coax the sprites from the pinging water and the dryads from the woods. Read Tennyson’s Brook Song there beside the real brook and see how the murmuring water adds power and beautiy to the poem and how the poem enhances and refines the beauty and melody of the brook. This is but one illustration out of ten thousand. How about that troublesome Ode, of Wordworth; On the Intimations of Immortality—not to mention the rest of the title. Try the magic of that poem by the stillness of