Salisbury High School - Pillar Yearbook (Salisbury, CT)

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I4 Ye Sarum Booke an increase in pay or position. They only ask to be left alone. Such people are the satisfied. Satisfaction is happiness. It is not the full happiness, however. Full happiness demands that one be constantly active, one cannot stop and gaze fondly on what one has ac- complished and be really happy. There is something lacking when one is merely satisfied. This state of satisfaction is to be found most predominately in small towns. It is hardly as noticeable in a city, at least. People are content to drift and live the same routine. They are perfectly happy in what they are doing. No one wants any more. It is too much of an effort to exert oneself for the sake of a bigger house or better education for one's children. The happiness they have is not worth the breaking up. Satisfaction is a type of defense. It is an excuse for not being daring enough to attempt the future. It is an excuse for a brilliant man's settling down to drudgery as a clerk when he could be the head of the company. Laziness is strongly an alloy of satisfaction. There are causes for this in small towns. In the first place it is traditional. Always, since the early settlement days, the town has been slow and easy going. The town founders were so, progress has not speeded life up a great deal. Many people shrug their shoulders and say why should we do something our fathers never did? Then, since life is so easy going, it casts a spell of indolence over the individual. It makes him feel that life is good as it is. Why change? Happiness is worth more than striving mightily in the uncertain hope of greatness and maybe bitter unhappiness. The life of contentment is the true life-for the mentally stultilied. The third reason is, that to the average small town citizens there is not much of a goal to strive for anyway. At least it is not tangible. Higher education is not the most important thing in the world-when one has to sweat and suffer in at- taining it. People seem just as happy without that, too, so why bother-that is their way of reasoning. Now satisfaction perhaps is all right for the masses. But in a small town it is practically universal. The weight of it is so heavy that it wears down anyone who professes his desire to be great. Shocked matrons do the rest. Anyone who is dis- contented is unorthodox. It so dominates men's minds that they are unable to under- stand why young so-and-so wants to go away to school. The

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Ye Sarum Booke I3 What all this change signifies I am unable to guess. Per- haps it might mean that we are returning, in a way, to the state of the savage when we thrill at the drum breaks of Chick Webb, perhaps our harmonic sense of music has hit a new low when we rave about the squeaks of Benny's clarinet, or almost feel the shrill blasts of Bunny Berigan's trumpet. After all what is the supreme criterion of music? Does it not seem rational to assume that everyone might have a different one, and if this is true why should not this generation have a different one from the last? Even if we are retrogressing in the estimate of some people, is it our own estimate? As we grow older we probably will be- gin to love the great classics more and more, but at our stage of development I think it is better to love swing than no music at all. The love of a thing lies in the appreciation of it, there- fore if a drum break and some hot licks on a clarinet are appreci- ated by us as much as a Wagnerian crisis, by someone else, the love for each may be equal. Are we returning to the native's rhythmic madness? What- ever is happening, all swing fiends love it .... and after all, since the present generation is ephemeral in its universal value, why should it not enjoy an ephemeral madness? .i.1....T SATISFACTION WHENEVER the word satisfaction is mentioned, depressing images arise in my mind. I think of small towns with their numerous citizens all deep in the groove of self satisfaction. I think of blighted ambitions, of greatness which might have been. Images of men in their forties rocking back and forth in contentment as they sit on the wide porches, and of women who are satisfied with life and who bitterly denounce all who are not contented, also come to mind. I see a state of inertia, of sure- ness that one's self is perfection, and that progress is a thing of the past. There is no retrogression. When men are satisfied they are in a state of suspended animation. They live and love in one frame of mind. Advancing years do not show a corresponding evolution in mental ability, or material position. They are perfectly happy in keeping their same job without ever desiring

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Ye Sarum Booke 15 local high school was good enough for his father. They cannot understand why a person would like to read German or French. Their's is a life of contentment which neither adds to, or takes from progress. When, however, satisfaction comes to a young doctor who could have a brilliant future, and causes him to settle down in a small town to practise, there is a tragedy. He should be in a medical institute, but a year of association with the solemnly satisfied denizens of the town drenched his ambition. His sole desire is to become one of the folks. Here progress is dead. The same is true of a lawyer. A person with artistic talents should never live there. Satisfaction kills genius. That is why I think it is a sin for any man to be contented. His soul should torment him, drive him on, on, on. With a turbulent soul he will progress. His soul at ease, he will be contented and never wish to strive for anything. One should remember that the weary will rest when they are dead. That is time enough. No one should be satisfied to stand back and look fondly on one's work. There will be time for that later, but now strive on. Satisfaction will kill your soul, too. EDITORIAL NOTES AT A RECENT meeting of the Editorial Board of Ye Sarum Booke the following were chosen as members of next year's board: Bushnell Smith, Editor, Daniel Riker and George Mudge, Associate Editors, Frederick Capen, Business Manager. THE Rt. Reverend F. G. Budlong, Bishop of Connecticut, made his annual visit to the school on Sunday, May 23, when he confirmed two boys, Daniel Riker and George White. THE FOLLOWING boys were chosen for next year's Dance Committee: Robert Cole, Chairmang Daniel Riker and Bushnell Smith.