Reading Memorial High School - Pioneer Yearbook (Reading, MA)

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8 TITE PIONEER. One day in the year known as Arbor Day is devoted to the planting of trees. On this day our schools should be encouraged to beautify their surroundings with an eye for the future gratification of beauty. The Highland School has spacious grounds which the pupils delight in making and keeping beautiful. Compare with it the surroundings of the High School. On three sides nothing but dry, barren sand and on the fourth the cemetery! The building itself certainly is not artistic and, devoid of trees and lawns, what a dismal sight it is ! To be sure, the Common is near, and is the school’s only redeeming point in regard to its exterior. But the Common would not at all suffer from a removal of the High School. In fact, it would be greatly benefited by such an action. The Common is a landmark of Reading and as such should be preserved in all its simplicity, undeco¬ rated by plants and shrubs. We should all be public spirited enough to wish to have our town beautiful with natural adornments and as this can only be accomplished by the help of the individual citizen let each one do his share in making and preserving its beauty. M. A. II. GRADUATING EXERCISES. PRAYER SINGING PROGRAMME. Rev. W. W. Wakeman. Vocal March V. E. Becker SALUTATORY AND ESSAY The Heritage of American Youth of Today to Marion Addie Howes. SOLO . : r i Elvy Josephine Hunt. P;SSAY The Colonial Maiden Bertha May Harris. SINGING Unfold, Ye Portals (Redemption) . - Gounod ORATION . The Spoils System Oscar Alfred Nichol . ESSAY Education out of School Louise Marion Pratt. SINGING A Unison Song Bullard ORATION The Boer Patriot Ernest Timothy Wakefield. SINGING Merry June (duet) Vincent VALEDICTORY ESSAY Our Aspirations and Our Ideals Alma Nellie Damon. SINGING The Lord is Great (Athalie) Mendelssohn PRESENTATION OK DIPLOMAS Mr. W. S. Parker. The teachers and editors wish to thank the following pupils for the contributions, which on account of lack of space, they cannot accept, but which meet the demands of the paper. Grace McCrum, Eva Hudson, Marion Parker, Louise Holden, Alice Putnam, Elsie Pratt, Ruby Abbott, Elsie Eaton, Ella Gleason. We are continually hindered in our work by lack of reference books. If the pupils would take the matter in hand, it might be remedied. An entertainment might be given both for the sake of raisi ng funds, and for convincing our friends that we are willing to bear our share of the burden, GRADUATES. ENGLISH COURSE. 1 ‘ercival Parker Herman Walter Hay Ina I.oufse Eames Ella Martin Gleason Grace May McCrum • 1 - Elvy Josephine Hunt .... Louise Marion Pratt Vera Emerson Scott ENGLISH-LATIN COURSE. Bertha May Harris Mary Ellen Cullinane Rebekah Louisa Bruorton Alice Ethelyn. Nichols Martha Hodges Kittredge . Elsie Marion Tuttle Grace Marion Stimpson Jennie Hall Nichols Ethelyn Abbott Smith Oscar Alfred Nichols Ernest Timothy Wakefield » i • INSTITUTE COURSE. j Edward Francis Parker, Jr. Clarence Elmore Carter CLASSICAL COURSE. Alma Nellie Damop Clarion Addie Howes

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THE PIONEER. Vol. IX. No. U THE PIONEER. COMMENCEMENT NUMBER. EDITORS. Alma N. Damon. Marion Howes. Herman Hay. Assisted by the English Teachers. ADVERTISING AGENTS. Elsie Tuttle. Edward Parker. Ten cents a copy. For sale at the various news stands. Entered at the Post-office at Reading ' as second class matter. Printed by W. E. J. F. Twombly. CONTENTS. Editorials ....... 7 Graduation Program ..... 8 Social Ideals in 19 th century Literature 9 Mr. Butterfield’s Second Visit to New York. 12 The Boer War ...... 15 Orange Culture in Florida 16 Music in Milton. 17 Character Development in George Eliot’s, “Adam Bede,” “Silas Marner” and “The Mill on the Floss.’’ 18 Departure of Wit . 21 Alumni Notes ...... 25 Remarks on Courses of Study 26 Courses of Study. 27 Outline of English Work .... 29 Te cfcers and Pupils , , , , 30 Price 10 Cents. EDITORIALS. This year we wish to present to our readers a “Pioneer” which shall be of interest to all. During the past few years the paper has been chiefly a Commencement number consisting entirely of the graduation essays. This num¬ ber will contain work from all classes and we sincerely hope that it will be a success and be acceptable to its readers. THE CARE AND PRESERVATION OF TREES. The question concerning the care of our for¬ ests, trees, and lawn is widely discussed among women’s clubs, and societies are being formed to take action in the matter. Even the state au¬ thorities have considered the importance of carefully preserving nature and there is in Massachusetts a Forestry Association which is doing much practical work in this direction. By its laws forest and fire wardens are compelled to he appointed in every town. Also every means is tried by the state to exterminate the gypsy moth, so destructive to our trees. Nature has endowed Reading with a good share of forests and we are indebted to our an¬ cestors for our beautiful shade trees. They should be held almost sacred as relics of the past generations. How carelessly are they de¬ stroyed ! The work of the axe is hut a few minutes while the growth of the trees has been the process of centuries. It seems shameful that even their limbs and branches should be cut to allow telephone and electric wires to be strung through their tops, READING, JUNE, 1900.

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THE PIONEER. 9 SOCIAL IDEALS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE. (From Miss Scudder ' s “Social Ideals.”) Nineteenth century literature is the expression of a period quite different from any that lias gone before. The times of political strife in which Swift wrote are over; the stately and simple movement of expansion in the Renas¬ cence lies far in the past; the majestic immobil¬ ity of the feudal system is hard even for the imagination to reproduce. The greatest help to spiritual ideals, the Christian Church, was little in evidence in the early part of the nineteenth century. The spiritual ideals of any people may he read through its imaginative art. The imaginative art of early England was not Christian. There was no inspiration for prose and poetry, nor did either solve its social problems through her aid. Thus the thought of the century began with its foundation slipping away in all directions, leaving it unguided and helpless. Such a pe¬ riod no man could express. Therefore we must know many authors, in order to gain even hints of the social moods, desires and sorrows of modern times. The English poets may well be called the heirs of the Revolution. Their ideal of love and freedom is our national inheritance. From Wordsworth to Byron, the poets were influenced by the political revolution with its swift, dra¬ matic changes from hope to despair. The aim of all their passion was ideal. One notable fact in the poetry of the revolutionary period was the new spirit of seriousness which it showed. These poets were probably the first who believ¬ ed their visions might influence public thought and social work. After preparing the ideal for future generations the voices of the poets were silenced, m 1825. Now comes the Victorian Age and with it a change in the places of poetry and prose. This change was inevitable, .as prose expresses best the social interests and passions of men, while poetry exists on illusions. From the days of Sartor Resartus, English prose assumed a social attitude. Its candor and audacity in rendering larger collective facts account for its new dignity, scope and importance. Novelists and essayists have with one accord been social critics. The novelists give us criticisms through pictures, the essayists through analysis. But if we follow the social aspect of men of letters from 1830 to 1880, we shall see the growth of a new con¬ sciousness which was developed over all Europe. Three men have played the most important part in this social evolution ; Carlyle, the prophet, of peasant origin, indifferent to delicacy and beauty; Ruskin, the dreamer, son of a rich merchant, softly born and bred; Arnold, the scoffer and observer, from the professional class. After these men Avere silenced, a new social force took up their work embracing the first fifty years of Victoria’s reign. First let us glance at the great work of the Victorian novel. At the beginning of the pe¬ riod, fiction turned from donjou and tourneys to the street and club, the England of today. Dickens and Thackeray uncovered and revealed the social pictures and problems of early Victo¬ rian England until, in 1850, their simple pro¬ ductions gave way to novels of protest and arraignment, which in turn are yielding to the novel of constructive suggestion. Our social novels illustrate and supplement social essays. Beneath all this literature, is a civilization with fuller ideas of freedom than ever before known, for. its hope, and a new form of bondage in which millions are held, for its achievement. Literature has confronted a social situation dra¬ matic and difficult, and intelligent England shows appalled surprise. But our writer has to en¬ counter these and leader, critic, opposer of his generation though he be, instinctively utters the age in which he lives, and his works in some degree must lose their charm for the next or the same century. Writers, however, do not see the world alike, as we find by comparing contemporary authors. Take for example Dickens and Thackeray. Dickens’ coarse and heavy melodrama and crude plots have lost vitality. In Thackeray’s works we find a charm, yet they do not delight us as