Santa Rosa High School - Echo Yearbook (Santa Rosa, CA)

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THE ECHO OF THE SANTA ROSA HIGH SCHOOL my being when I left the last arm-joint, and let myself drop the remaining twelve feet into the swirling waters below. I was jostled about, but managed to catch hold of a rock and climb upon it in time to avoid being carried out to sea with the tide which had just started to ebb. I sat on a rock and waited for the tide to recede far enough to enable me to find a point on the coast which I could scale. Then home! All had not ended however, for I heard a loud cry and looked up in time to see the old man start swiftly down the ladder. Caution was far from him, for he came as fast as he could by great long strokes. It seemed as though he had but started when the ladder broke and the recluse, clinging to the chain of bones, fell headlong upon the jagged rocks below. I looked on as one in a horrid dream, and watched the ebb tide bear the corpse from off the rocks out into the sea. As I waited for the tide to recede I sat and dreamily watched the shortened chain of bones as it rattled in the breeze against the cliff. Carl Stroven, ’20.

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THE ECHO OF THE SANTA ROSA HIGH SCHOOL moonlit, and a considerable distance from the sleeping lunatic. I proceeded to disjoint all the bones of the skeleton and spread them out in front of me, calculating the length of each part which I could use. My qualms in handling the skeleton had almost entirely disappeared, so the next night I planned to take the mummy- fied corpse apart. The least said about it the better, for the task proved to be much more nauseating and difficult than I expected. For weeks I worked hard every night, cutting notches and boring holes in the bones with a pocket knife which I had with me at the time of my fall. Once the old man must have awak- ened and seen me at work, for he got up to see what I was do- ing. I was aware of his approach, but kept on whittling. To my great joy he did exactly as I was hoping he would do, he thought I was just whittling. “That driftwood is hard to get,” he said, and began to chide me about my brooding and whit- tling out in the cold. Meanwhile my labors were bringing me closer and closer to the time when I should take the chance which would either kill me or make me a free man. I put off for a few days my desire to be away from the cave. On a clear moonlit night I could be sure to work fast and with accuracy. On the chosen night I waited impatiently for the old man to go to sleep. I took the hermits rather unstable cord and got out the bones and began to tie them together in a string. The cord which had once been heavy and strong, was now frayed and weak; this meant that the bones, in order to be securely fastened, would take all the cord, and more too, if I had it. When the chain was finished, I fastened it to a skull which I wedged in behind two jagged knobs of rocks. Then I lowered my ladder. Carefully I worked ‘myself down) hand-over-hand, not knowing at what joint of that gruesome ladder the rotten cord would snap. A whole-hearted feeling of freedom filled

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THE ECHO OF THE SANTA ROSA’ HIGH SCHOOL The Dawn of Better Things Second Prize ADIE rolled her eyes. This magnificent motion of the young lady’s greenish orbs was a fixed habit in which she delighted, for she thought it made her look sinister. In other words, “vampish.” “Glory!” she ejaculated. “Isn’t she a made- up old doll, tho.’ Please note: Silk hose, French heels, mar- celled hair, rouge, perfume a-la-roses, and a poodle dipped in violet water. She must be over sixty, too”—this last confid- ingly. Sadie rolled her eyes again. “Poor purp!” murmured Jimmy Brown, the office boy. The object of this discussion was the wealthy Mrs. Van de Vere, who-had the most fashionable residence on Fifth Avenue, New York. Not only that, but her husband, Arnold Van de Vere, was a multi-millionaire, who had made his money in mining. Didn’t he have a gold mine in Colorado, a silver mine in Peru, diamond quarries in South Africa, and, added to that, any number of oil wells in California? Mrs. Van de Vere had entered the humble office of the New York “Herald’—-not so humble by the, but made so by her majestic presence—to insert an ad in the “Lost and Found” column. The statement read thus: LOST—Diamond necklace. If found, return to Mrs. Van de Vere, or phone 666. Reward. Sadie read the words on the slip of paper aloud, and the office force gasped in unison, “A diamond necklace! It must be worth a million!” “Oh Boy!” yelled Jimmy. “Do you suppose it could be