Philadelphia Manual Training School - US Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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WVe think all joined in the spirit of humor which pervaded the whole performance, having their opinion of our school in no wise lowered by the little buffoonery which interrupted our usual dignified course, and thinking none the less of the boys for en- gaging in this frolic at the end of a term of hard study. An appropriate, though rather boisterous, finale took form in our School Yell, after which we separated for the holidays. ARBGR DAY, APRIL 26TH, 1889. TREE PLANTING, MAY 213, 1889. ALTHOUGH the full programme, as arranged' by Prof Sayre and other interested ones, was not carried out on Arbor Day, owing to the bad weather, we must still look upon it as being carried out, and that in a most magnificent style, for it took three days and a number of trains of cars to do it, besides the two bicycles and the fine team that one ofthe gentlemen took on the expedition, the equine portion of which seemed to take great pleasure in endeavoring to chew its owner's hat, while he fthe ownerj stood contemplating the tree-planting and thinking such touching thoughts of the present and future that we shall not attempt to express them. But this tree planting, though the most important event ofthe whole Arbor Day, because it decidedly represented the interests of the Class of'89, belongs to the last of the three days, we must mention the preceding occasions before going further with this. Our Arbor Day season opened with a very entertaining and instructive paper on Forestry by Mr. Spangler. X1Ve all felt on, quitting the school that we had received avery good lesson. He spoke of the active interests taken by the German, government in the protection of forests by establishing schools for the study of forestry by the masses. Prof Rothrock emphasized the same fact on the Tuesday following, and also that Arbor Day and the study of forestry are yet newqthings and that the people must be first educated up to them, that while the German schools are so numerous, there is, to his knowledge, but one school in the United States that teaches forestry, and that is our Manual 46

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significance on this night, for all saloons were closed, all cops dozed and all Democrats soldj, After recovering our senses we went to seek the other part of the crowd, which we soon found, giving the good, old, steady- Wiff! Whack ! Red and Black ! I yell Man-u-al! Hiss! Boom! Rah! We now marched again to Ninth and Chestnut, thence to the Public Buildings. As the small, wee hours of the morning were approaching, some of the boys, under the supervision of papa's rod, decided to engage themselves in peaceful slumber, instead of longer pressing bricks and chewing airl So we dismissed. YULE-TIDE. THE old English custom of making the Christmas-tide a season of feasting and jubilation has been taken up in the same strain in this country. - But one of the most marked attributes of American character is love of novelty and change, and the Manual Training School, thoroughly American in all its senti- ments, was no exception to the rule, when in place of the tradi- tional school exercises it substituted a little entertainment arranged by the scholars, which they held at Carpenter's Hall on Chestnut Street, Wednesday evening, December 19th, 1888. Those who attended will not accuse us of egotism if we insert a programme for the benefit of those who were unable to be present. A very pleasing display of skill in legerdemain opened the entertainment, leaving all in pleasant expectation for the next act. After a pleasant interlude of recitations and singing, highly Havored with jokes, came a little take off upon the care- less boys of our school, whose scarcity renders them particularly noticeable. We would not inflict upon the reader a list of the d77'lZ77Z!ZfZlY pevfsofzfe and the parts which.they represented. Suffice it to say that the spirit of the whole play was fun, pun and mummery. Any former ideas we may have had upon the subject of spir- itualism were quickly shattered by Mr. Dickerson's display of skill in the performance of those tricks usually ascribed to the instrumentality of spirits. ' '45

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1 Training School, which he is happy to say has for several years taught that branch through his able friend and former pupil, 'Professor Hering. Professor Rothrock compared particularly the boundless forests found on our shores by the early settlers and at the beginning of our government, with the scant supply of timber found to-day, while both he and Mr. Spangler dwelt upon the close relations between the impaired working of our springs and flow of our rivers, the unnatural behavior of our climate, and the wholesale destroyal of our forests. The day for the tree planting could not have been a more fit- ting one. The boys went mostly in groups. One notable com- pany, composed mostly of members of sections Zkffee and four, arrived early enough to enjoy a game of ball at Chamounix be- fore the arrival of Professor Sayre. The scramble up the steep hill was rather difficult, though the scramble down again when the train bearing the Professor arrived was rather more so. The crowd that hnally came together must have been, in spite of the prevailing element of gayety, a most impressive one, with the form'of Professor Sayre very conspicuous, and those of the boys scattered around, and the Class President, lVlr. Swayze, whom the various pleasure seekers that were so fortunate as to pass our way must have immediately recognized as an important dignitary. ' After a while a silence came over all as the President called the meeting to order, with a roll of ARGUs as gavel and a large book as desk. The questions before the meeting were: which should be the Wee, and which the hole' Qfor there were a number of both articlesj. The tree taken was a beautiful mag- nolia, and the hole was a magnificent specimen indeed. Then was the critical moment. The roots of the tree were carefully placed into the hole Qand the tree too, of coursejg the landscape gardener ordered his man to jump into the hole and shake out the roots well, which the latter proceeded to do, while the former acquainted Professor Sayre with various botanical facts, with theloft-repeated parenthesis, Nice tree, in very audible tones. The earth was thrown in by the Class of '89, and so vigorously was it done that the landscape gE1l'dCDQ1',S man came very near being buried alive, while Mr. Rice, the smallest ' 47