Selwyn House School - Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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SELWYX HOUSE SCHOOL MAG.-KZINE ,first lesson Reading, of course! We have all heard of the three R's- Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic- and the first of these, at least since the use of printing, is Reading. It is indeed an open road to knowledge, however obstructed to-day by the misuse of such devices as the movies , the gramophone and the radio. XYhat would be your state if you could not read ? Of how much pleasure and profit would you be deprived F For the profit, the terse words of Francis Bacon, in his essay on Studies , have surely made that clear. It is rather of the pleasure that we shall now think. iYell, then, having learned to read, what shall we read and how shall we read F Let us read the truest, the best-written, and the most pleasing cf written words in all languages. Parents, teachers, and true friends Cboth public and privatej will help ycu in your choice. Do not be afraid of poetry or plays. For the how , read lst. correctly, 2nd, clearly, 3rd, as intelligently and beautifully as you can. There are, of course, three modes of reading: - Cab reading to yourself fthe French call it le lire des yeux J, Cbj reading aloud, CCD reading from memory, which we often call reciting or, from stage or pulpit, Flocution. You had good examples of the last in the charming performances of the plays, The Merchant of Venice and As You Like lt. Now, as soon as you have learned to read, in the usual sense, you should learn to scan. By this I mean that you should learn to recognise and use certain groups of syllables which have come to be universally used by prose writers and by poets: we call them feet and have kept their Latin and Greek names. For example there are the spondee, with 2 long syllables- such as undone , forlorn g the dactyl, which has 1 long and 2 shorts, e.g. gracefully 4 the trochee, 1 long and 1 short, e.g. leaping , nearer g the iambus, 1 short and 1 long, e.g., to strive , away 5 the anapaest, 2 shorts and l long, at a bound , and others all of which great writers have found most useful in adding to the meaning of their words the beauty and force of fitting sound. Now feet fall into rhythm and often rhythm brings about set lines in set groups, as in the beautiful Spenserian stanza and the wonderful works of Yergil, Shakespeare, de Heredia and other immortals. Looking then for feet and rhythm, give yourself the pleasure of reading not only English, but Latin and French- even before you can fully grasp the meaning of these latter two. Look, too, for similes, metaphors, sound echoing sense, and other pretty tricks of skilled writers. Caj And here you'll often find a happy sense of help. For many of your Mothers, rightly proud of their accomplishments in French at school, at college or while travelling abroad, take such strong interest in the tasks you're set that they are but too glad to help you read, and if, in doing so, they carry back their memories to the times when they ex- celled in reading French or Latin poetry, these memories will certainly increase the pleasure that they find in helping you. Selwyn House Mothers shine in this respect, as boys, and masters too, have often found. fbfb Clf you will read with care from fab to fbi it may be that your ear will find for you a sort of rhythm in those sentencesl. ll-ll

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FOR THE SCHOOL YEAR 1933-1934 On July 25th. 1909 M. Louis Bleriot, the Frenchman, made the first journey above the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine ascending from Les Baragues near Calais, and alighting at a point near Dover Castle. This historic flight, accomplished, in a small twenty-five horse-power monoplane lasted thirty-seven minutes. In August of the same year the world's First flying meeting was at Rheims, in France. A giant Handley biplane flew over London carrying forty passengers in November 1918. In June 1919 Sir John Alcock and Sir Arthur W. Brown, in a twin-engined Vickers- Vimy-Rolls biplane, won a 510,000 prize by a non-stop flight ofone thousand eight hundred and ninety miles from St. John's, Newfoundland, to the west coast of Ireland, covering this distance in sixteen hours twelve minutes, the average speed being one hundred and eighteen miles per hour. This was the first trans-Atlantic crossing. Sir Alan Cobham's five thousand miles' air-tour of Europe, was accomplished in three weeks in the year 1921. Lieut-Commander R.E. Byrd in 1926, starting and returning to Spitzbergen, flew over the North Pole and back in a three motored Fokker's plane, being in the air fifteen and a half hours and covering one thousand three hundred miles. Capt. C. Lindbergh flew alone from New York to Paris in a small monoplane, doing three thousand six hundred and thirty nine miles in thirty-three and a half hours in 1927. In 1928 Flt-Lieut. S.N. lvebster won for Britain, the International Schneider Trophy, at a speed of two hundred and eighty-two miles per hour. In the same year Mr. Bert. Hinkler flew from England to Australia in fifteen and a half days in a thirty horse-power light aeroplane. Flt-Lieut. lYaghorn on September 7th, 1929 won the Schneider Trophy at a speed of three hundred and twenty-eight miles an hour. Flt-Lieutenant George H. Stainforth held the world's speed record from 1931 to 1933 for Great Britain, when he created a speed of four hundred and fifteen miles per hour. This record, however. has recently been eclipsed by an Italian oflicer. Amy Johnson, born in Yorkshire, England, is probably the greatest woman who ever took the air. She flew alone from London to Australia in 1930, and in November, 1932, broke the record of the fastest time from England to South Africa by flying from Lympne to Cape Town, 6220 miles, in four days, six hours and fifty-four minutes. Her husband, Captain Mollison is also one of the best and most popular aviators living. I-Ie has many air records to his credit. Perhaps the most outstanding aviator of our day is Air-Commodore Kingsford Smith. He has broken record after record in his air-mail flights. I-Ie has recently flown from England to Darwin, Australia, in the remarkably short time of twelve and a half days. He has since been knighted by the King for this marvellous feat. R.C., Form -1. eu llvl

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FOR THE SCHOOL YEAR 1933-1934 There is one body of English Literature with which the art and joy of reading, in all three modes, have been, for centuries, closely associated, viz., the Liturgy of the Church of Christ Catholic in England as by Commons' Law and Royal Assent Established Qin other words-the Book of Common Prayeri. Passing by such miracles of sense and sound as A General Thanksgiving and The Lord's Prayer , glance for a moment at the Collects. Here, in these brief lyrics of the adoring and petitionary soul, tribrach and anapaest, dactyl and iambus follow one another in gemlike perfection, informed by a rhythm justly consonant with the sense, but unchecked in their grouping by the rigid rules of academic prosody. Scan them as you please, you will not fail to find a beauty of syllabic grouping suiting the cadence to the sense. fNote that alliteration may lend lilt to what were else a listless line.j I used, just now, the term gem-like , and indeed the simile will bear extension, for, as upon a hyacinthine plush, its centre bright beneath the amber's glow, the lapidary's hand, with art and grace, poses some few admingled, unset gems, so- in the soft gloom of sacred arches, from glittering altar or bright chancel stall, the cleric's well-tuned voice daily recites the deathless assonances of Cranmer and his fellows: for example:- Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings, with Thy most gracious favour, and further us with Thy Continual help, that in all our works begun, continued and ended in Thee, we may glorify Thy holy name and finally, by Thy great mercy, obtain everlasting life, through Jesus Christ our Lord This particular example is used here because for some years, about twenty, it has been our First Lesson , daily, in Form VI. It is so old that its history is uncertain. It is so true to life that it might be used by the votaries of any real religion. About once a year a few words of explanation have been given, something like this:- The meaning of these words must be taken in the light of their Latin origin. Prevent does not mean stop , but prae-veni , come in front of us, as a guide or leader, and with favour Cfaveoi, with encouragement, clapping of hands, as a mother or nurse- or, later, a comrade i- cheers you on in your attempts to walk, or win a race. Continual Ccon, teneol means holding to us all the time. Glorify 1 let us shed credit on the leader- ship and guidance, and then, at last, by Thy mercy, obtain everlasting life Ah l that, of course, is a very high ambition. To do some deed, to register some thought, that will live for ever. How many have done it ? Moses, one supposes: Galileo, or Isaac Newton perhaps: surely an Aramaic carpenter's apprentice Cfor very few in all the world at that time saw in Him more than thatj born in a stable in small Bethlehem and sent to a cruel death when only thirty-three: shall Shakespeare wear so bright a crown, or mighty Bach ? May we, in our own times, claim it for Pasteur or for Rutherford F Perhaps for all of these- and others-in some degree. Still, there is the mark at which to aimz- to trace, amid the myriad facts of life, one of those simple-seeming Laws of Nature which have been so fitly called the Thoughts of God z to score, for mortal ears, some theme that may be caught by reverent listener, from the music of the spheres. That is reading Life. U51