R J Reynolds High School - Black and Gold Yearbook (Winston Salem, NC)

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THE BLACK AND GOLD 31 I was just beginning to wonder one day whether any more of my old classmates were coming to see me concerning their futurity when in came a group of them, each one anxious to hear the fate of the others. There were the two Eaton boys, inseparable as ever, Louise Crosland, Elizabeth Conrad and Charles Roddick. As they crowded into my seer's den, a dimness came over my vision. The scene before me became indistinct and blurred, a strangely familiar pungent odor filled my nostrils. What was it? Suddenly, as if by magic, C. C. C. in flaming letters burst upon my sight. Clifton's Cabbage Corner! Why to be sure, this was little Eaton's experimental farm,-here it was he was to become a second Burbank. Here it was he was to produce a wonderful new vegetable by grafting wild onions to cabbage. While Clifton pottered around among his cabbage plants, I seemed to see Clement in the dingy ofhce of the establishment keeping the accounts of C. C. C. and in between times Writing those learned historical theses which were to make him no less famous than his brother. Another of my classmates I saw was to follow the agri- cultural path of life. Louise Crosland, merry, happy-go- lucky Louise, was to settle down quite contentedly among the cows and chickens of her Stokes County farm, ruling her better half with an iron hand. Elizabeth Conrad's future I saw was to be varied. First she was to try her hand at school teaching, then I saw her in the editor's den. Finally I saw her the mistress of a mansion in Kernersville and driving her Buick, monogrammed R. M. S. down the boulevards of our city any fair day. ' Charles Roddick, our silver tongued orator, I saw was to become a prominent member of the bar, and when not arguing such questions as Ship Subsidy in national halls of Congress was settling divorce questions for the fair sex for which he had attained quite a reputation. Tom Wilson was the next to visit me. How delighted he was to find that, like the great joe jackson, he was to become

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30 THE BLACK AND GOLD Della Dodson was the next to visit my seer's den, little Della who used to be so good in class, destined to leave a henpecked husband to care for the pots and kettles while she paraded around the country, helping the suffragettes smash windows and the like. As Della left, Lucile Snyder and Louise Brown came in, followed by Allan Owen. The girls, I aforesaw were to be alas, old maids and live in a tiny home with their cats and Howers, while Allan was to carry the chain for the South- bound and in the course of time steal the hearts of many a maiden who chanced to cross his path as he journeyed from Waughtown to Wadesboro on business for the corps. A murmur of voice in my ears interfered with my vision one day, a strange foreign sound. At last I perceived that it was the dialect of the heathen Chinee and that it was Bessie Hutchins trying to preach in far away Chop-suey land to the almond eyed girls and women. Strange to say, it was on the day that Mary Elird and Emily Vaughn came to see me that I saw Theodore Rondthaler, always interested in science and inventions, and Arthur Spaugh, his boon companion, navigating some kind of H20 Flying Ship that they had invented. I saw them sailing up, up, into the distant blue towards the fabled land of Mars. Then the vision faded, and all I could see was two lonely widows,-one a school ma'am in far away Dagupan explaining the Farewell Address of Washington to a widely interested class of Philipinos, and the other the verse maker for the Country Lady's Magazine. Dthers of my classmates I saw were to follow literary lines in after life. Hortus Scott was to become famous as a preach- er, and by his glowing eloquence, his lofty flights of imagina- tion, attract great congregations, especially of women. jim Hankins was to become quite famous as teacher of a new system of pennmanship, so easy to learn that even a school teacher could make a passing grade by practicing fifteen minutes a day.

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32 THE BLACK ANI! GOLD a professional ball player, attracting great attention, especial- ly among the fairer lovers of the game, during season, and out of season running a vaudeville show, making quite a hit as a comedian himself. It happened one day while Curtis Vogler was chatting with me, that some of the commercial girls dropped by to see me. Since graduation Lelia Hauser had been holding a re- sponsible place at the county home, copying the rocords of the institution that they might be filed in the State archives, so it was with delight that she learned through my prophetic sight that the was to become in the near future STATE CGPYIST of valuable records, an office to be instuted by the efforts of a to-be-noted lawyer and legislator, Charles Roddick. Bertha Ferguson and Lettie Green I saw at the head of the suffragette movement in our State. The day they visited me I beheld, in my mental vision, a triumphant march through the streets of Greater Winston-Salem, with a familiar figure carrying the banner with its Votes for Women inscription and Right Makes Might. That unfortunate banner-bear- er I saw with dismay was my good friend Curtis Vogler who had had the misfortune of being nabbed by the angry mob of feminine voters. It was Margie Hastings who always declared that she didn't believe in foretelling. And when I told her that she was destined to become an old maid and trim hats for a living she said she believed less in it than ever. Edwin Stewart was another doubting Thomas , but all the same when I told him that the year 1930 was to see him still holding the position, honorary by term of office, of Business Manager of the Black and Gold, he eagerly exclaimed, And I bet you, I'll make it pay, tool . Marguerite Davis left for the University of Chicago pretty soon after graduation, so I had to mail her the long list of titles, M.A., A.B., Phd., I foresaw she was to win in future years through her research work on the subject of Student Government.