Petaluma High School - Trojans Yearbook (Petaluma, CA)

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THE ENTERPRISE, ’13 heart of the jungle with Livingstone, or to glide down the Nile past the ruins of forgotten ages in Bayard Taylor’s dahabieh.. It may be to scale the icy summits of the Sierras with John Muir, or to crawl across the frozen fields of the south in Amundsen’s dog sleds. It may be to visit Myra Kelly’s little citizens in their Eastside schoolroom, or an Egyptian princess in her hanging gardens at Babylon. But one would not travel always. Sometimes it is best to stay quietly at home and to call around us the familiar faces of old friends. I shall never forget three happy days during my college course when I was just sick enough to be kept indoors and not too sick to enjoy life. One by one the old companons came trooping out— Little Lord Fauntleroy and Sara Crewe, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, Budge and Toddy and a score of others. For three days college was forgotten and I reveled . Neither would we be content with old friends alone, when new ones are beckoning to us from every book shelf. Isn’t it wonderful that the most delightful people the world has ever known can be our comrades for the reading? Think of really being a friend of “gentle Will Shakespeare;” of sympathizing with every thought of that marvelous mind and with every throb of that great heart. One such friendship would surely make a life worth while. How few people we actually know of all our every day acquaintance. Doesn’t it seem strange that these finer, stronger, wiser people take us into their very hearts? How would you like to tramp for a fortnight over the windy Cevennes with Stevenson (and Modestine), or to fish down some lit¬ tle river with Van Dyke? Nothing could be easier to arrange. Their personally conducted trips are open to all. No less real and delightful are the friendships we may make with the dream people of fiction. How much of the joy of living one misses to whom Mr. Pickwick and Huckleberry Finn, Becky Sharp and Lorna Doone, Ramona and Jean Valjean are only names, or less than names, and not living, laughing, loving, suffering realit¬ ies. Indeed they are a great deal more truly alive than our next door neighbors or ourselves, for they live on in the hearts of genera¬ tion after generation. The best part of it all is that the only condition imposed on us is one which we can all meet, the gift of appreciation, “the open mind —23—

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UMMER is coming! Summer is coming!” Away back in March, on one of those days when the wind rattled the shutters, and whooped around the corner of the house, and blew soot down the stove pipe, and tweaked your hat over one ear as you struggled home from school against it-at the close of such a day a plump, red throated lin¬ net perched on an apricot twig by the window insisted loudly upon it, in defiance of the gust that rocked his slender foothold. It sounded decidedly optimistic then, and so it was, but it was true. For a time the roofs were white in the mornings and every blade of grass wore fairy armor and the window panes were marvel¬ ously etched, but all the while the sap was rising and the buds were forming ready for a few days of warm sunshine to call them out. And now, at last, summer is here—summer, with all its golden op¬ portunities for doing the thousand and one things you have been sav¬ ing up against just such a time; for fishing and sewing and burning holes in the carpet with chemicals; for seeing strange places and strange people; for renewing old friendships and making new ones; for following the inclination of the moment, with no unwelcome twinges of conscience. Then happy he who has a book and the will to read! How many an adventure in contentment he may have and with what delightful guides. He needs very little in the way of baggage —an apple or two (in winter I should recommend popcorn) and, by way of a steamer rug, a stretch of good green grass (in dry weather and under a tree unbeloved of caterpillars). A turn of the leaf and he is off to whatever quarter of the globe he chooses. It may be only to saunter down the open road for a summer’s afternoon, lured on by the sound of David Grayson’s whistle. It may be to penetrate to the —22—

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THE ENTERPRISE, ’13 and the open heart,” as Ruskin puts it. Perhaps it will spr J full bloom at once; it needs cultivation to bring it to perfection, but if one desires it there is no possibility of failure. It is a thousand pities that reading should ever seem hard work. Certainly vacatioin reading should be unadulterated pleasure. Put the dictionary and reference books aside for awhile, unless your in¬ terest sends you to them, (then, so much the better) and simply lea and enjoy. As to choosing, if you are so fortunate as to ie wi m reach of ' a library, indulge yourself in a good browse among the shelves, skimming a bit here and a snatch there, until t ieiig i 00 T draws you as the iron filing is drawn by the magnet. If not, may Fate send the right book in your path. I say “book” again and again, for the great danger of vacation reading is that it will be frittered away entirely on magazines. We couldn’t do without the magazines; we must have them to keep a- hreast of the world of politics, of invention, of discovery. But the trou¬ ble is that too many of us slip lightly over these things and spend the most of the time on the stories. And magazine stories are, for the most part (not all, mark you) like some waffles we bought once at the beach—burned at one end, raw at the other, deluged with sugar, and altogether a menace to digestion. One who loves good books is armed cap-ci-pic against the enemy of society, boredom. His mind is a gallery of pleasant pic¬ tures, a storehouse of entertaining thoughts. He lias count ess friends to turn to in every idle hour, and if an attack of t le i ues threatens, he has only to take a whiff of “Samivel Veller” and pres¬ to, change! the sun shines again. Then Ho for a booke and a shadie nooke, Eyther in-a-doore or out, With the grene leves whisp’ring overhead, Or the street cryes all about; Where I may read, all at my ease, Both of the newe and olde, For a jollie goode booke whereon to look Is better to me than golde. H. C. P. —24—