Salinas Junior College - La Reata Yearbook (Salinas, CA)

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RETRIBUTION Lies! Lies in exchange for a kingdom Which I should have given to thee! Villains, a curse upon you. Come, Cordelle, thy father regrets he Was unfatherly. Dear daughter . . . Oh, God, what a mess I have made! Despair is heavy. I totter Upon the brink. I am afraid. She moves! Oh, Lord, let her live! She means so much to me now. I know she loves me. Please give Her strength that more sorrows bow Not this grey head further. Tell Me thou livest, dear Cordelle. Fools, why stand you there staring? You impudent wretches, bring water. Don't you see she is trying To open her eyes? Oh, my daughter- Bring water, I say!-Don't die. Your father wants you to live. You hear? Your father-don't die- Your father Wants you to live! She opens her eyes, she smiles. God takes you, my child, Cordelle. HELEN FONTES RAIN Drip, drip, drip, drip- The rain is dripping, beating, Dripping . . . on the roof. Now it sounds like footsteps lagging, Now like urgent drums avoice. Drip, drip, drip, drip- The rain is dripping fast. SACHI FUJIKAWA

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The college gang at the party a few miles away had dared me to enter Death Mansion, secure a skull, and return to the party to prove my valor. And now I had actually crept through the wind and rain, through the tangled growth of the garden to the hulk of the house. I crept up the creaking steps and pushed open the groaning door and entered the black, foul interior. Shivering from the icy touch of cold wind that hit me as I entered, I scurried down the hallway into an open doorway I had seen by the last flash of lightning. Before I crossed the threshold, I stopped dead in my tracks. SGME- THING was in that room! I couldn't hear a sound except the muffled wind and rain outside, but I felt the presence of something awful, hideous, unreal. I clung to the door for support. My knees knocked together like castanets. A bolt of lightning illumated the room. It was a room of terror. Human bones-white and shining-and spots of red covered the floor. Then the light was gone, leaving me paralyzed with fear. Within a foot of me was my trophy. Quick, now! Grab one and quit the house while still intact! Calling all my courage together, I stepped forward to snatch up one of those hideously grinning skulls. In that moment the lightning flashed again, and in its glow I saw a sight that turned my body to stone, my heart to ice. Standing directly in front of me was a huge figure, arms raised ready to plunge me into an open cistern that lay in the floor between us. It was the Doctor! His face was a madman's mask, fire flashed from his eyes, red froth dripped from his lips, and blood oozed from jagged gashes on his face and bared chest. With a wild shriek he stepped over the open hole, and his blood-covered talons closed about me in a grasp of iron. He raised me high over his head, and then, oh-he posed me over the hole and flung me downward straight toward a huge tank of lime. Over and over I turned, and with a wild splash I struck the terrible flesh-consuming alkali, and ---- ! Pl' 31' 31' 51' I sat upright in bed. I was alive, and except for being drenched in nothing more than perspiration I was unharmed. I had been dreaming. Whew! Never again will I eat three pieces of mincemeat pie covered with whip cream before I go to bed. PAULINE BENSON 43 0

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CONSISTENCY Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay on self-reliance stated that two things that hindered people from being self-reliant were conformity and consistency. Because we are expected to conform to the beliefs and habits of our elders, it would seem that whether we do or not depends upon our consistency, for, without doubt, we do conform up to a certain period in our lives and then, according to our personal degree of consistency, we either rebel or continue along in the same old track. There is much to be said on both sides of the ques- tion. The whole question of self-reliance, then, narrows down to consistency. Taken as a whole, consistency is a trait to be admired. How, then, can it be a means of hindering self-reliance? It can truly be said that one who accepts withou t any doubt the teachings of his fathers is either a stupid plodder, or one who lacks the self-trust to dispute them. It can also be said that one who readily changes is fickle and weak-natured. However, whether or not a person consistent in conformity lacks self-reliance is doubtful. Often it requires self-reliance to be consistent. No law can be sacred-but that of your nature, says Emerson. It is part of human nature to be consistent in conforming to the past. There is a certain, definite craving in every man for everything to have its definite place. For this reason, he is only too glad to accept the doctrines of the past without dispute because they are tried and proved by the thousands of years of their existence. After adopting these doctrines it is part of his nature to be consistent to them. To ask man to surrender these beliefs and to assume new ones of his own manufacture is the same as asking each man to be another Moses or Christ. No one can accuse man of being timid or of lacking self-reliance because he conforms to the past. Man was blessed with a memory for the very purpose of remembering a past to conform to. The non-conformist who rejects the doctrines of the past will not be self-reliant because, groping for spiritual comfort of his own making he will not know his future. Man will always be consistent to conformity because- no man can violate his nature. The man who would be great by following Emerson's advice that the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweet- ness the independence of solitude, must consistently conform to this 450