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

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PAGE TWELVE THE PIONEER gend of the rug. Let me tell you the story as it was told to me. “—• and learning that the Emir’s death had profited the donor, I reason¬ ed that perhaps the rug had some¬ thing to do with it so I called in a chemist. At first he laughed at me but finally he agreed to examine the rug. Well, you know the rest. The rug was sprinkled with a poisonious powder, the creation of long ago, which had evidently remained unsuspected for hundreds of years. When the dust had been stirred up the poison mingled with it and caused the death of those who had inhaled the preparation. Quite clever and ingenuous I call it.” -and so did I. P. G. P. ’30. THE GREATEST SCARE I EVER HAD One night I went over to my chum’s house, presumably to study. After a perfunctory glance at our lessons we started to read a mystery story, taking turns in reading aloud. Soon it grew so spooky we didn’t dare to go on be¬ cause there was no one else in the house. Even after we had closed the book, we grew so jumpy at every creak and rustle in the old house that we decided to go to bed. Not daring to sleep in separate; rooms, we slept together. Soon we were in deep slumber. But my dreams weren’t so very peaceful. I dreamed that I was skating over an iceberg, clad only in the thinnest of evening dresses with kid slippers on my feet. I skated over the edge and felt myself falling— falling. Just as I reached the water, I woke- up to discover that my bed-fel¬ low had slowly but surely wound the bedclothes around her recumbent form and I had nothing over me. Just then I saw something that drove all thought of the cold from my mind. A dark shadow lay on the moonlit floor. As I watched, it began to move toward the bed. Fascinated and terror strick¬ en. I watched the thing come closer and closer. My voice and limbs were frozen, and I could neither move nor make a sound. Then, oh horror of horrors ! The shadow slowly rose and my hysterical laughter filled the room. I had forgotten “Jove,” my friend’s new puppy. Though we had thought the door securely closed, the latch had not caught, and the puppy had nosed the door open and come in for com¬ pany. Barbara Jewett ’32. MY DISCOVERY OF HYD-AND-SIEK (Since reading “The Aztec Treasure House” by Janvier I have often won¬ dered if the public would not be in¬ terested in the explorations of Dr. Iamfrom Missouri, the Swedish Ar¬ cheologist. The following is the story of his South Buston explorations). For many years I have been an archeologist in South Buston. I studied ancient Hog Latin manuscripts in an effort to find a village which had not had contact with Amerikuh since the Red-coats gave up Buston on Evacuashun Day. How I alone knew it was there I can not tell Unless it is that I had observed certain things about the natives of South Buston which seemed to indicate that Cockney accent was being kept alive with even more fog-horn characteristics than in the case of Milt Gross. Thus I infer¬ red that the Red Coats had secretly left an isolated group of ultra Cockneys when they evacuated; the plan was : when South Buston became in danger of being Amerikuhnized these ultra Cockneys would receive a heaven-sent sign and they would im¬ mediately loose themselves on the un¬ suspecting Bustonians and contamin¬ ate them with Cockney. I was able to make out a plan of the

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THE PIONEER PAGE ELEVEN THE BLOOD SAROUK Do you remember the great Lowen- Hill Mystery? I recall that it occur¬ red just before the Spanish-American war and perhaps you wouldn’t remem¬ ber ; but even if you do, the tragedy bears retelling. Mr. and Mrs. Lowen-Hill, residents of Park Avenue, and members of that class called the idle-rich were traveling in Asia-Minor when Mrs. Lowen-Hill discovered in a half-ruined palace of the great Emir Saut-Abal-Frumen, a treasure in the form of a glorious Sar- ouk rug. She found the rug in a deserted bed room of the great Emir, who had died so mysteriously. An¬ nouncing her intention of buying the carpet, she met opposition from her husband on the grounds that such a rug would be hard to send home and that it was too old. These arguments increased her desire for tiic: Sui i- til finally tmr h ,,!C k nd J purchase. But when she broached her plan to the care-taker, she met de¬ termined opposition. Again however she won and doubly so, in her mind, for she learned the history of the rug. It had been the gift of a brother ruler to Emir Saut-Abal-Frumen. Shortly before his death, it had been placed in his bed-room. Soon after his death, his heir Frau-Po-Abal died of the same malady as his father. Strangely enough succeeding tenants of the palace fell ill of the same dis¬ ease and all died. These curious deaths gave the palace a bad reputa¬ tion, and due to the fact that the great rug had been a prominent arti¬ cle in the royal chamber and also be¬ cause of its hue, it was called the “Blood Sarouk.” To say that Mrs. Lowen-Hill was pleased is to express her satisfaction mildly. Upon her return she placed the luxu¬ rious rug in the drawing room of her house; and of course she had a ball, on the pretext that she wanted to see her friends again, but in reality to en¬ joy the envy of the female guests be¬ cause of her possession of the perfect rug. The Sarouk after having been laid, was left in the still solitude of the room until its opening for the ball. “Oh Mrs. Van-Courtland do come in and see the rug that I picked up in Turkey. It’s a Sarouk and it has the most interesting history. You see they called it the ‘Blood Sarouk’ isn’t that thrilling?” Mrs. Lowen-Hill revelled in the tell¬ ing of the story, and gradually as the tale progressed, the number of guests in the room increased, their movements causing the dust which had gathered during long centuries to rise from the thick carpet so long unused and to cast itself over the modern drawing¬ room. Personally I think it does not speak well for the servants. At any rate, when the guests left there were two who were suffering from slight colds, and Mrs. Lowen-Hill was so ill from attending to her duties of hostess that when the last guest had left, she retired after calling her phy¬ sician for some sleeping powder. On his arrival he found Mrs. Lowen-Hill very ill and ordered her removal to the hospital. Mr. Lowen-Hill retired that night a worried harrassed man, and next morning when his valet went to call him he found a corpse! At the hospital Mrs. Lowen-Hill struggled be¬ tween life and death. For all the medical skill, she too passed away! The newspapers reported that double death; and then two more deaths; both had been guests of the Lowen- Hills ! Upon the receipt of this knowl¬ edge the press questioned “foul play” but it came to naught, for the police inquest decided death to be natural, even though one of the guests present at the inquest retold the legend of the rug, this the coroner labeled “silly superstition.” The home of the Lowen-Hill’s was sold and a distant relative fell heir to the property together with the rug. But this person investigated the le-

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THE PIONEER PAGE THIRTEEN streets to follow in order to discover this desperate band (the original maps showed cow-paths but then, Buston’s Streets are only cow-paths in dis¬ guise). I gathered about me this band of adventurers: Pat Pending, Wal Street, C. M. T. Camp, and General Nuisance. We outfitted ourselves with pogo-sticks and at the sug¬ gestion of General Nuisance we also added some oranges to our equipment. We started out in high spirits, but since none of the party had ever had much experience with pogo-sticks we had a great deal of difficulty with those little beasts. General Nuisance rode his like a little boy’s broom-horse and all but Pat Pending followed suit. Pat soon regretted not doing so because he miscalculated the size of a mud puddle and, on hopping the poor pogo-stick in the water, he lost his balance. He emerged looking like one of the Knights of the Mud-bath. Before con¬ tinuing our journey Wal Street gave a dividend to Pat to cheer the latter’s dampened spirits. Thus attired in mud and greenbacks, Pat was indeed a comical sight. Eventually after the many hardships of city travel, we came to a house which seemed to have been untouched since colonial days; I ap¬ proximated that this was our destina¬ tion. I figured better than I knew, for a little peep hole was opened in the massive door of three-ply pine and recalling my bootlegger’s signal at the “Poem of the Month Club” I said : “Three live mice on a dead cat’s chest Yo Ho And a quart of milk”. Eater I learned that the Cockneys detested milk and that rum should have been used even for mice. Even so, the door was opened and we were admitted into the presence of the last of the Red-Coats. It was really Pat Pend¬ ing’s appearance that gave ad mittance; his costume of mud and greenbacks combined with the party’s using pogo- sticks was very similar to the heaven¬ sent sign which was a golden man on stilts. The pogo-sticks somewhat re¬ sembled stilts and Pat’s greenbacks were almost as good as gold. The Cockneys treated us very gra¬ ciously for two or three days, although both sides were wary. Then one night a very clever pickpocket removed Pat’s greenbacks. As soon as we discovered the theft, we prepared to battle for our lives, because we knew there would be trouble as soon as anyone tried to buy anything with the green¬ backs. They were counterfeit. Late in the afternoon a great commotion was heard among the Cockneys, and we assumed a war¬ like formation under the command of General Nuisance. We loaded our hip- pockets with oranges and held one in each hand. As a Cockney tried to enter our room, an orange was thrust into his gaping mouth. The receiver was then in a sorry fix for how can a Cockney fight unless he has full use of his voice? We thus subdued the whole band in five minutes and we might have done it in two minutes, if we had waited for the whites of their eyes. Our complete victory made the place sound, or rather look, like a deaf and dumb asylum. I think that this is the most im¬ portant of my explorations for now South Buston is safe from Cockney contamination and may in time be fully Amerikuhnized. T. Fife ' 30. ADVENTURES IN (Overheard by the Pioneer’s Roaming Rover) “But you know, girls, there’s plenty going on behind the counter at the steam table. Yeah! I should say so. Keep your eyes peeled and you will DELICATESSEN see a lot. Uh, huh ! I caught a grand one the other day. Mr.— ambled down large as life, and started to conduct a rapid-fire cross examination on the subject of sandwich filling. My dear, you should have been there. It was gorgeous. Guess he thought he was