Seattle University - Aegis Yearbook (Seattle, WA)

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THE ECHO would be the only remains of that putrid substance that stands before me. “If there is a God in Heaven, and a justice in this Universe, you. devil incarnate, will suffer for the human devastation you have caused.” Amidst a thunder of applause that threatened the walls of the courtroom and that lasted fully two minutes, Rochet, flushed but happy, sat down knowing that he had succeeded. T he crowd told him in its enthusiasm that his speech had been fit, that it had flowed from his spirit and mouthed his sentiment. As the jury filed out and friends gathered round to congratulate him. Rochet thought he saw a ghost. But it was none other than “Old John Burns, the Prosecuting Attorney, with his clothes awry and much the worse for dirt, but with a smile as big as life lighting his cheerful, ruddy “map of Ireland.” “Son. you win: pick up the side bets. I got away from that bunch of dope-hound chinks who tried to shanghai me just in time to hear your masterpiece. Let me shake you by the hand; neither these walls nor any other in this city have ever heard any better display of oratory than that which you have just finished. I’m proud of you. Why hide your light under a bushel, you should be prosecuting attorney. Today I resign in your favor. I’ve got enough salted away to take care of myself and leave Virginia a dowry that would make the Prince of Wales marry her: but I’ve an idea that there’s a wild Frenchman for whom she cares more than all the Princes in Westminster Abbey and you’ve got my blessing.” Bill wrung the hand of his friend, counsellor and evidently father-in-law. 'Fears nearly came to his eyes when he thought over the swift moving events of the day. In two hours the jury returned and announced the verdict “Guilty,” recommending imprisonment for life, and Rochet, mindful of his own happiness, was glad that it was not “Punishment—Death.” —Bertrand Curran, ’26. 21

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THE ECHO v honor, their souls, for the white poison. In vivid language the young lawyer, with all the accumulated fire and imagery of his French ancestors, told of the reasons why the backbone of the dope trust should be broken and why Reynolds as the leader should be punished. He compared him with an insidious octopus who had entwined his victims and threatened to drag the whole nation beneath the surface of civilization, down into mire of his existence. In a masterful conclusion he finished: “You stand there on the witness stand. George Reynolds, pleading Not guilty,’ and yet your face belies your words. Not guilty,' you say to the dope selling charges preferred against you: Innocent.’ you reiterate, of selling soul and body destroying poison to these children, but your pallid countenance, your hot breath tainted with the character of the devil you serve, your eyes—windows of your soul—if you still possess a vestige of that noble gift of God—are dark and satanic and shrunken, and shriek in noiseless but penetrating tones the exact contrary of your lying tongue. “Here is a miserable, shuddering and shattered wreck, a mere handful of nerves, with a system poisoned by cocaine and morphine. Once. O how long ago. this small body, now doomed to die. was a bright, healthy, red-cheeked girl. Ten summers had touched her golden tresses and tinted her laughing face: every day was a new adventure: life stretched out before her in a silver thread, like a path that leads to unknown Edens and fairy-like Paradises. “But. and here the red grasp and sinister influence of Hell, in the person of this prisoner you see before you, took hold, and this fair child was turned into a more horrid ruin of physical and moral self than we can contemplate. “Reynolds, no punishment : no death can satisfy or remedy what you have done, but only that your kind may turn from this nefarious traffic by the example of your punishment, I do ask the Court to hang you by the neck until dead. If my tongue could express my thoughts, your soul would shrink and shrivel under the lashing, and if my eyes could burn and consume you. a drop, if there is that much good in your diabolical make-up. I

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THE ECHO A Dissertation on Schools SCHOOLS, ah, schools! What a part they have played in the education of the world! Understand me in the beginning that by schools I mean that instrument of learning or torture (as the case may be) that has occupied so important a place and played so great a part in the gradual change from Adam’s Ale to Volstead's Moonshine. Schools are not a modern institution and cannot be destroyed by fire or prayer, as an eight-year-old boy might think, but will rather require the determined, organized and simultaneous efforts of all the minds of every one who has passed from babyhood to manhood under the roof of the said institution. Whether school is beneficial or harmful we cannot say, but we must give it credit for having gained reputation and favor, especially from fond parents of small boys. Making a historical review of schools we find no trace in the earliest days of the traditional schoolroom with its benches and giggling, untaught occupants, even after the Garden of Eden had become a memory. All snapshots that we have with us today of life in that period give no hint of small girls playing hopscotch in school yards, nor of small boys learning future history by means of the birch-rod. From the time of Cain and Abel until the flood, history lapses into obscurity and we are afraid that the little ones had their education somewhat neglected. Still there can hardly be a doubt that the children of the age of the flood felt quite a relief when the heavy rains necessitated a dismissal of what little school they may have had. There is no record of their subsequent feelings. From the Ark reposing on top of Mt. Ararat, we make our way across the Red Sea into Asia, and through Asia we proceed into China—into the Oriental temples of learning. Two thousand years before Christ, history tells us, science and the fine arts in China were far in advance of the rest of the world. Though we cannot truthfully say that the Chinese were as far advanced as the modern Americans, who receive 22