Richmond Hill High School - Archway / Dome Yearbook (Richmond Hill, NY)

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and turn G-man, or special agent of some sort, in order to see justice done at any price. Once more his hero kills, for when the friend accuses him, he admits his guilt, and then follows a fierce struggle between Right and Wrong. However, our sinner does not perish as in the old melodrama, but instead, kills his best friend. At this point the hero's half crazed mind returns to normal, he indulges in a moral soliloquy and regretfully for triumphantlyl retires to a con- venient kitchen, where he turns on the gas, or else to a lonely mountain shack, where he will blow out his brains. Another variation of H. Ovington's favorite philosophy is the tale of blighted love. Romeo meets Juliet, this time in an East Side night club. Of course they fall deeply in love, but they cannot marry because one of them is dying of any number of unpleasant diseases, or one has already wed some variety of an idiot, so they sacrifice their lives on the altar of Unfulfilled Love and end it all by jumping together off a nearby bridge promptly at midnight. But perhaps you consider such literary gems morbid trash? If so, dear reader, be advised that you are the sort of unbeliever who must be psychoanalyzed at once by young Master Perkins himself, who will sooth- ingly persuade you that you are at least a half -wit. No doubt H. Ovington will recover from the effect of his particular neurosis as soon as he becomes more accurately informed by experience and research, and thus a potential mad genius will be lost to the world. RUTH CHARLES, January ,39 VVZnter You go .... Leaving no trace Behind you save the stars- Coldly, relentlessly, gleaming- Remote. Sprzng Pale green- Lines etched along The sky, and woods, herald The coming spring .... the world listens . . . Alive. Suzanne Katzman, January '39 Page 15

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tive days clubs were lecturing on the psychology of raising problem children, so H. Ovington has been brought up in a psychological atmosphere as a result of over-zealous and misinformed monthly club lecturers. H. Ovington has spent much of his leisure time in the Perkins library consuming Professor Watt A. Nutt's classics, Why People Are Crazy, Every- one Is Some Sort Of An Idiot, Be Happy Yon're Insane, and Mrs. B. A. Neuroticis famous My Ten Years In A Lunatic Asylum, and How To Go Crazy In Ten Easy Lessons. Naturally, such outstanding literature has had some effect on H. Ovington's creations, so let us stop to study some of his stories. Before we attempt this research, let me remind you that H. Ovington is not a new species of intelligentsia. In the days of bobbed hair and the 'fNew Freedom his predecessors were the daring radicals who talked know- ingly at the advanced age of sixteen about free love and communism, and by twenty were the confirmed and worldly sophisticates of Greenwich Village. H. Ovington, however, has enough of a sense of humor to mock the ideas of lns inunediate predecessors as Hunsound rnob reacHon.n llere again,lns psychologicaltraining reveals nself,for one cannot even have a crazy idea these days Without being classed by H. Ovington as a neurotic, a monomaniac, a victim of claustrophobia, or one of any number of other 'Wcsv and uphobiasv Scientific terminology rolls off the tongue of this sage of seventeen, who is quite certain that he is qualified to write of Life and Love as an experu despihzthe factthatthe only genuine enunnnithat he has experb enced is fear of parental disapproval at report card time. The typical plot of any story invented by H. Ovington runs somewhat along these lines. Hero commits some crime because of a mental quirk, probably inherited from his Great-Uncle Archie. fHow H. Ovington loves to drag family skeletons out of the dusty closet and expose the shortcomings of his herois family treelj After this crime has been accomplished, his hero perpetrates some cowardly deed fusually hocking Mamma's pearlsl which brings in his entire family, and so of course members of the family must either kill each other or themselves because of the blot that the hero has smeared on the family escutcheon. In order to spare his dearly beloved for bitterly despisedj wife or sweetheart the shame of his nefarious deeds, yon hero murders her about the middle of the third page. Aha! At least six corpses to H. Ovington's credit in three pages. Not bad for a rank amateur. All that remains for the fourth page is to have the hero's best friend discover the deadly deed Page 14

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While all thoughts slept in innocence A cloud, hiding the whole from view, Blew up over the mountains, Turned black the sky-from blue. Upon an unsuspecting, sleeping world, Tempestuous in lilind fury and rage, It reached out its hands, bewildering The youngest, the oldest, and the sage. It uncovered lovely, hidden things And tore them away with pain- Caught them in indecision Between the wind and the rain. Ruth lVlacNeal, January '41