Scituate High School - Chimes Yearbook (Scituate, MA)

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THE CHIMES 11 I got this job, about as low as you can get, being your own boss, on one of these scows. He spit again. What a story! You ' ve certainly seen a lot in your day, Mr. Cava- naugh. Yep, I can say I ' ve seen quite a bit, have been everywhere from New York to Hong Kong. And tomorrow I sail to Boston in this tub. The mosquitoes were getting pretty bad and affected all of us but Mr. Cavanaugh, whose tough skin they couldn ' t possibly pierce. There was another long silence. This was interrupted by Mother ' s Well, Don, we really have to go. It ' s been terribly nice talking with you, Mr. Cavanaugh. I ' ll bring down a pie or cake for you tomorrow, and some apples for the rest of the bargemen. Good-by. Good-by, sir. Good-by. As we walked away, his eyes followed us with a longing, desperate look as if he had parted with the best friends on earth. He gave his limp pants a pull. A slight ray of hope swept across his face. Perhaps I can talk with ' em some more tomorrow when they bring down the pie. SHOPPING Mary Schafer, ' 37 Most women experience difficulty when they go shopping. Their trouble seems, as far as I can discover, to result from two main causes: namely, the vagaries of the feminine mind, and the displays put on by department stores. The common fault of most stores seems to be that they have too many articles on display; they dazzle the eye of the shopper, and distract her attention from her shopping list. I will give you a n instance of wihat I mean. You enter a large clothing shop, fully determined to buy a green sweater, and search for the woolens department. Finally your eye lights on the display of sweaters on a counter in the corner. There are sweaters- — dozens of them — red, blue, yellow, brown, white, purple — every hue of the rainbow; but green, strangely enough, seems to be missing from the color scheme. You vaguely paw through the mass, in a vain effort to locate a few gjreen ones, and spend a second or two wondering what in the world has happened to the girl in charge of the table. Suddenly a voice at your elbow says, insolently, Help ya, miss? and there is the delinquent salesgirl. In a timid voice, you ask for some green sweaters. Disdainfully the girl shifts her gum and hauls two or three boxes from beneath the counter, What style— slip-on? Yes, if you don ' t mind, awed by her scornful competence. What size? 36?

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10 THE CHIMES ' ' Lord), don ' t nienlion about helping you with your boat. I ' m alto- gether too glad to help. Heaven knows it ' s lonesome enough here, and I like someone to talk with. I always wanted to know, asked my father, what happens to these barges when you get caught in a storm. Oh, they cast us loose, and all we can do is hope to heavens we will get picked up. I should think you would be awfully afraid of a storm, said my mother. Oh, no, lady. When you follow the sea, you find there ain ' t no time to be afraid. Why, many ' s the time — We saw there was going to be a story; so we sat down — w hen I ' ve been in plenty of tight spots, and it just doesn ' t pay to be afraid. How long have you followed the sea? I asked. I ran away from my home up in Vermont when I was fourteen and came down to Boston, where I shipped as a cabin boy in a clipper ship. Boy! that was a tough ship with a tough crew, the worst I ' ve ever run up against. He spit a thin stream of tobacco out into the w ater and drew his big rough hand across his mouth. Yep, he went on hurriedly, fearing that we might go, nearly every morning w hen I went on deck to scrub ' em down, I found blood. There was a feud between the first mate and old Dan, the Finn. One day in a storm the mate sent him aloft up the royal mainmast to fix the main sky sail for no reason at all. When Dan reached the top, the first mate spun the wheel around and the ship came into the wind with a whang which threw old Dan off. Off! Off where? asked Mother. Off in the sea, Ma ' m, and that ' s right where he is today. That was a dirty, cowardly trick of the mate ' s, and we swore to revenge old Dan, we did. One day when I and a couple of other fellows were aloft, we dropped a two-hundred pound block on the mate ' s head. We thought sure it had killed him, but it hadn ' t. After a week he came to consciousness, but he had a fractured skull and a broken back; he warn ' t fit for the sea no more. Did you ever see him again? Yep, that was what I was coming to. Twenty years later when I was express man at the old Providence Depot, which was where the Statler Hotel is today, I saw him. He was in the station sweeping the floor. He saw me and said, ' Hello, John, I ' m awful glad to see you. ' ' I ' m glad to see you, too, ' I said. ' Right where you are now, doing a nigger ' s job, wearing a nigger ' s cap. It serves you right. You killed a good man, drowned him. You should of died w hen you were hit with the block, but you didn ' t. God saved you so you could do a job like this, a nigger ' s job, and I ' m glad of it. ' He was white with rage and would have like to hit me, but I was in my prime and could have licked him ten times over. He just stared and walked off. There was a long silence. Then, he said with a little sigh,

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12 THE CHIMES No. I think a 34 would do, if you don ' t mind. ' Naw, a 34 ' s too smaH, you need a 36 at least. Here ' s some pretty ones. They ' d look real classy on you. No, I don ' t seem to care for any of those. Have you any others? Nope, that ' s all we got. You paw wistfully through the rainbow-colored heap on the counter. Finally you notice a purple one, way at the bottom, with puff sleeves and darling buttons; and right away you just know that you ' ve got to have it. A glance at your watch tells you that you ' ve only time to get your train; so you grab up the sweater, give the astonished salesgirl a bill, and dash off, hugging the purple sweater to your bosom, satisfied. It is only after you get home that you notice that the sweater is purple instead of green, that it is a size too big, and that purple doesn ' t look good on you, anyway. OPINIONS Madeleine Bailey, ' 37 I hate war, whispered Mr. Brent to his daughter Pat, This was the last sentence he spoke as the train drew away from the platform. He was a brave man, but, like so many other brave men in 1917, he couldn ' t see any reason for the horrible slaughter that was involving the whole world. I hate war, whispered Bill Lewis to Pat the last time she was with him before he too went over. But Pat didn ' t hate war! She thought it was different and patriotic. She loved the uniforms of the men, and the millions of flags made her tin- gle all over with love of country. She gayly displayed her soldier ' s knitting (as she called it) and she orated fluently on the glory of war. She boasted of her father ' s and her fiance ' s being with one of the first regiments, and she composed poetry by the reams about the brave men who were fighting. She held parties for the young men who at any time expected to be called to duty. All over her city people were saying, Let ' s go to Pat Brent ' s tonight. She ' s one of the grandest women of today with her vitality and true patriotism. I hate war, whispered Pat as she stood one night at her window. Her hands were clenched, and her breath came in little gasps. On the floor was a white piece of paper on which was written, We regret to inform you that Lieutenant William J. Lewis died in action December 7. Bill!