Peabody High School - Peabody Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA)

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THE PEABODY 21 But the thing must be done thoroughly. First he reads us a selection from the Bible, putting us in a very reverential frame of mind. Then, in a calm, mechanical manner, he passes us theme-paper, white paper with blue lines and red margin. Oh, yes, there is no getting around that-it is beauti- ful paper. Forty-iive minutes for a short story, he bellows forth. In those awful words he gives vent to all his pent-up emotions and with this one shriek he transmits to us his headache. In feverish haste to assuage his ruffled spirits we write, write-but nobody knows what. Is it a story? Yes, if it is labelled as such. Is it a theme? If it is, it would draw an E. What is it then? Heaven knows what! Having at last ourselves come to this realization, we pause, we hesi- tate, then throw aside our masterpiece. At this the man with the headache remarks that it is sometimes well to write and keep on writing until We find the story, then start over again. Then he turns to the most hopeless of the class and asks her if she has found her story. Oh, if you are sympathetic, your hearts will go out to her, for the next minute he-walks up to her desk, balances his spectacles on the tip of his nose puts his 'hands on his hips, frowns at her terribly, stares and bursts out in a shriek of laughter. When she tells him she can't write a short story- he doesn't laughg he roars. What shall she do? She is desperate. Still he stares and laughs. By some miraculous instinct she looks at her watch, and lo! the bell rings. ...wi DAYBREAK I saw her as she stood upon the cold gray rock, A silver shadow in the trembling dawn, With arms outseretchedg a moment poised- And yet another moment she was gone. And then the sun, in all his yellow majesty, Arose to shine upon one, who, with deft Strokes sped, Hera like, across the sapphire lake, And on the lonely rock that she had left. X jane Reynolds. THE CURSE ' Saul Makrauer I had known him for a long time, indeed a very long time, and always when I went to see him, he would captivate me with his wonderful stories- stories of Revolutionary days, of the Indians, and of the great outdoors. One day I happened upon him when he was in an unusually conversational mood, and surely as the inevitable, I was soon listening to one of his marvel- ous adventures.

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20 THE PEABODY 1919 Chalmers Siviter The New Year bells ring out, Heralding an Unknown Lightg Singing a story of blood and the dead And a triumphant, victorious fiight. Yes, the war is over, Peace will soon be signed, Many of the troops are turning home, Their loved ones here to find. Nineteen hundred and nineteen. Ah! significant the year shall be For the boys are coming back to us From the struggle across the sea. Shall darkness hide our vision? Shall we not see the light? Shall we grope blindly round about And fail to reach the Height? Reeking Mars has left the earth Crushed into his graveg But the Stars of Opportunity Shine o'er the Free and the Brave. 1.1T0 .. ' THE JOY OF WRITING A SHORT STORYU Fannie Aaron I ' Imagine the horror of coming into your classroom one bright sunny morning-in a perfectly good humor, remember-well prepared for a gram- mar examination in all the one thousand and one rules of VVoolley, and then having your teacher inform you that he is in a beastly humor. What visions of a stiff test! Then he calmly remarks that he is experiencing a headache, the first in five years, and intends to work it off on his innocent, peace-loving class. It is a terrible situation, I admit, but try to picture it. Well, he has received a fresh supply of theme-paper from the supply-A room. The sight of it lying on his desk worries him, irritates him. in fact it seems to torment him. He has no room for it in the book-case. Imagine the rest, remembering all the while the headache, the paper, and the fact: that there is a conspicuous lack of stories in his protege, The Peabody.

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22 THE PEABODY It was back in the eighties, back in the gold-seeking days when Biscuit and I met. VVe were both on our way to the valleys of plenty, lured on by the mad cry of gold, and were thrown together by mere chance. He hasn't much on education and his sense of the beautiful was terribly lacking, but he was a man, with a man's thoughts and actions. I took a liking to Biscuit at the start, and, before we had hit the trail much further, we decided to team together and share alike. VVhen we reached the gold fields, we staked our claim back in the mountains, and built a hut not far from the mine. VVell, Biscuit and I worked that claim for four long years- without the slightest set-backs or misfortunes. Out there under God's sky and untainted air we enjoyed the lot that had befallen us. Occasionally Biscuit would heed the call of Sandy Neck, that was the one-'horse town near our claim, and there he would while away an .evening talking to the fellows, or playing cards, or dancing at the Miners' Union. You look surprised. Yes, Biscuit could dance, crudely, I must say, but he could move his feet without tripping himself, so he was a dancer. Sometimes I would accompany him, and help him unload his excessive high spirits, and spend his lucre over the boards. But it was not the usual thing, for most of the evenings we spent at the hut, or took hikes into the mountains by moonlight. It was a glorious life, those four years of unbroken good fortune, and it seemed as tho we hit the trail. at last. But it did not last. There came a day. About the middle of April during our fourth year in the gold fields, I noticed a change come over Biscuit. It was gradual at first, slowly envelop- ing him like a foreboding cloud that precedes a thunder-storm. I couldn't believe it, but surely enough he was becoming a different man. I could make nothing of it at first. But as the days went by the change took shape. In- stead of the usual conversation and game of cards in the evening, he became morose and distant. His eyes had a far away look, dreamy, as if looking beyond into the invisible. I could hardly recognize the Biscuit of other days, so completely was his transformation enshrouding him. It seemed as tho he had something on his mindg what, I could not tell, for, when I asked him the reason for his coolness, he would only shrug his shoulders. He frightened me, and I had a vague instinct of something about to happen. Soon after I noticed the first change in Biscuit's manner, a strange thing happened. Instead of sitting quietly in his chair, as was his custom of late, he would pace up and down the room with his arms behind his back and his head bent forward. Now and then I could catch an occasional mutter- ing, and then, as if he were undecided, he would shake his head and look vacantly out of the window into the night. His eyes were fixed on something outside, and his body became motionless for minutes at a time. He ran his fingers thru his hair, and I could see his hand tremble as lie placed it over his forehead. Then in a convulsion of terror, with his hands out- stretched in front of him, as if to ward of some approaching monster of the night, he would cry out in hoarse whisper, 'The Damned Thing'. It was apalling, and in spite of my efforts to learn the reason for his maniacal conduct, it still continued. Night after night he paced the fioor,