Paxton High School - Reflector Yearbook (Paxton, IL)

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8 A GRAPHIC ACCOUNT OF UNIVER-SITY OPPORTUNITIES AND EXPERIENCES (By Dewey Fagerburg, ’1C, P. H. S.) Ann Arbor, Mich., Jan. 21, 1917. Mr. O. J. Bainum, Paxton, 111. My Dear Mr. Bainum: I have been trying ever since my return from the Christmas vacation to find time to write to you, but, owing to the proximity of semester examinations, I have been too busy. These examinations begin on January 29th and last until February 9th, and as I have all of mine on the first three days, my time is well occupied at present trying to keep up in my daily work and at the same time do a little reviewing. This will be a new experience for me, and I cannot help quaking a little as the various professors enumerate a few (?) of the things for which we are held responsible. Even so, I am coming to like the university 'better every day I am here, and, with no nearing vacation to look forward to, I must now enjoy the earthly things, and there are plenty of them. Whenever studies permit, you can always find plenty of amusement in the winter sports, which abound in this climate and locality. 1 do not wish the University of Illinois any bad luck, but I certainly would like to see a few more Paxton High School students come to Michigan. They could make no mistake no matter what they intended to take up, for although Michigan does not lead the country in any particular department (unless it be Law), the whole institution is well balanced, and there is no part of it which could be termed weak. The student body. as in most other large universities, is composed of men from every state in the Union, along with the scattered representatives of many foreign nations. For example, the man to my left in rhetoric class is a refugee from Austria, whom I vouch could tell Secretary Lansing a few things about the Central Powers of which he is totally ignorant. Again, I am thrown into almost daily contact with a gentleman from British South Africa, who had given up a two hundred dollar a month position as a school teacher to come to this country to learn dentistry—a profession which he expects to net him between four and five thousand dollars a year. I have often thought, as I passed the various foreign students on the campus, what a wealth of information I could gain if I were able to have a heart-to-heart talk with each of these men. To date, besides my Austrian refugee and South African dentist, I have only had opportunity to try my scheme upon a Porto Rican Spaniard, but I learned more about Porto Rico from him in an hour than I could have absorbed from a geography or history of the island in a week. Although he was too young to remember much about the conditions of the island before the Spanish-Ameri-can war, he was capable of reproducing the narrations of his father well enough to cause my blood to tingle with admiration for my fellow-countrymen, and to shuder at the brutality with which the Spaniards treated their subjects in the last days of their control. Of course, he was smart enough to appeal to my emotions, and, in a sense to humor me, in the course of his narrations. He, like most of the other foreign students, has a very brilliant mind. They are undoubtedly some of the ‘brightest that their native land produces, and as they have come a long way to gain the ad-

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AN INTERESTING LETTER FROM MISS EDITH BISBEE, TEACHER OF COMMERCIAL SUBJECTS IN PAXTON HIGH 1913 TO 1915. Now Teaching Commercial Subjects in the Dwight (III.) Township High School. Dwight, 111., Jan. 23, 1917. My dear Agnes— So you are the high and noble editor. are you? And now I wish I had given you a nice low grade, so you’d be too mad at me to ask for letters to the Reflector. I don’t know how to write for the papers, so I'll just tell you what I am doing and you can adapt it to fill your space. The copy of the Reflector that came the other day was so full of news, and the very news I was eager to get, too, that I could hardly attend to school duties. It made me fairly homesick for P. H. S„ and the good “bunch” over there. Most of the names in the Junior and Senior departments tell about folks I used to know—in basketball or on our “hikes’, or in classes. But where on earth did you get all those Freshmen and Sophomores? Are they as nice as the Freshmen of 191-1? Do they ever write lurid descriptions of their respected pedagogues? If anybody should ask you what I am like now. just refer him to the Freshman Reflector of 1914, and say that 1 haven't changed one bit since you wrote it. We are all busy here this week. We are struggling through the semester examinations, and at the same time are preparing for our Patron’s Day celebration next Friday afternoon. We will have so many patrons at school that we won’t know where to put them all, but there will be a program in the assembly room, and there will be exhibits of the work in every room. My part seems rather commonplace 'besides the art work and the sewing, for I haven't anything to exhibit except some work of the commercial arithmetic class, and some good typewriting. I am going to give a small part of the program, too,—a demonstration of typewriting to Vic-trola music. We have tried it out quite carefully, and quite successfully, too. I suppose you know that we have a township high school, but this year we are having some new “stunts”—a mixed chorus in the high school, a school paper, and an orchestra. The orchestra treats me better than the one in Paxton used to. They let me blow my cornet while they play and pretend they like it. This is the first year for the “Dwight Student”, and I can't say we are quite as good as the Reflector yet, but we are getting along and will improve with age. I have a room all my own for my department, with fine, adjustable desks for bookkeeping and individual desks for the typewriters. All of my avanced class in typewriting are tapping out sixty words a minute now, and the beginning class is working for the certificates which the Remington company gives when they pass a twenty-five word test. My department is doing pretty well, I think, and it is good to feel that they are accomplishing something. Give my regards to Mr. Bainum and all the rest of the folks—don't forget Mr. Papineau. My best regards to the Reflector—and its editor, with her assistants. Send me some more news some day. Very cordially yours, Edith V. Bisbee.

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9 vantages of our universities, they waste little time in other than the pursuit of their studies. Some days ago, these foreign students gave an entertainment which bade fair to rival some of the dramatis scenes staged in bygone days on old P. H. S. rostrum. As I think of some of those plays, I could almost wish to be back in them again. To me, they number among the most pleasant of my high school memories. I can only wish you good luck with them in the future. It must be almost time for another Reflector, and I am very anxious to receive it. The information which I have been receiving about the basketball team has been particularly meagre, and I want to get some firsthand news. Then, of course the Ads. are a source of interest to me, and I may say that I was glad to note their extent in the last edition. If everyone reads them as carefully as I do, you could conscientiously treble their price. Well, Mr. Bainum, the day has passed and I must close with the hope that you are in good health, and that your injured foot is strengthening rapidly. Sincerely yours, Dewey F. Fagerburg, ’16. A SPECIAL TALK TO THE GIRLS OF THE HIGH SCHOOL ON HOME-MAKING. (By Mrs. Dunlap at City Hall. Reported by Katharine Thompson.) On Thursday, Jan. 11th, Mrs. Dunlap. wife of Ex-Senator Dunlap of Savoy, 111., gave a talk to the girls of P. H. S. The girls were requested to go to the City Hall where Mrs. Dunlap gave her address on Home Making. She named four great habits which every person should possess. They ! were the Health Habit, the Work Habit, the Play Habit, and the Study Habit. With regard to the Work Habit, she said every high school girl should be able to get a good square meal and do other ordinary house work. She said that every person, young or old, should have a certain time each day especially for recreation, and that the Play ‘Habit was just as important as the Work Habit. Mrs. Dunlap said, regarding the Health Habit, that a person’s health depended largely upon the food he eats. She discouraged the eating of white bread and advocated whole wheat bread and vegetables instead. A person must be able to concentrate his mind so upon his lessons that he can study, no matter what is going on. She said that a person should be able to gain more than merely his or her lessons from the books which are studied, namely something which is practical in order to get the Study Habit. All of these accomplishments are necessary to make an ideal home maker. Prizes for Speed and Accuracy in Typewriting. The students of the Commercial Department are showing much enthusiasm over the Underwood Credential Typewriting tests which are being given every month. These tests are sent by the Underwood Typewriter Company and the student has no chance to practice them but is given time to read them over once. An “Initial Certificate of Proficiency” is awarded to the student writing 40 words net per minute according to the International Contest Rules .for ten minutes. Five words are deducted for each error as a penalty. After receiving the “Initial Certifi-