Shortridge High School - Annual Yearbook (Indianapolis, IN)

Page 26 text:

The Discard ll it 'h ! lig c -1 I I : i fu sleepless vigilance overhead in the toy-room. Then, when I heard a sloppy, scratch- ing step ascending the stairs-a step which is only too familiar to me, and which could be made by nothing save a loose-shoed scrub-woman, I knew that I was soon to face the worst. I ground my youthful teeth and stamped viciously as though I were grinding the foe to death under my conquering feet, and then, my moral cout- age greatly augmented, hauntingly, disdainfully I hung open the door, and faced the approaching blue turban. I remember now that I had planned to look delianee at the foe, but, what with my extreme youth and the terrifying appearance of the stern egress as she stood there, red faced and arms a-kimbo, I quailed, and my Na- poleonic grandeur fell away from me like a veil. Them traps in there must go, growled she, with a majestic and significant arm sweep in the direction of my valuables. I wept, I remonstrated, I cast myself at the feet of the inexorable fiend, but to no avail. Must go! Alas! Must go I Those words, I heard them grinding in my ears as I knelt, red-eyed and trembling, over my treasures and slowly gathered them into my arms. Them traps -the indignity of it. I reached the yard with my cherished burden intact, and then, oh joy of joys! a thought struck meg I could and would not part with my dearly-beloved and long-hunted friendsg I would conceal them-and I did so. I stowed them safely away under the house and went my way relieved, but worried, stung by a guilty conscience. The days passed by, and I, not daring to visit my sooty friends for fear of detection, dragged out a weary life. The years have not wrought much change in my nature. I have never learned to discard. I am still a prowler, and consequently my home is over-filled, littered with useless trinkets that I cannot quite bring myself to part with. I am a coward -a moral coward. A visit to my wardrobe reveals the fact. My wardrobe is ex- tremely large 5 it contains the garment in which I was wed, and every succeeding garment used between that time and the present. Now that I am an old man, I can trace the changes in fashion for a great many years. From these facts my reader can see that my wardrobe is indeed large-but not elegant. There is but one coat in ten which possibly can 'oe worn, and among the mould of mouldy shoes but one pair in a score: yet my courage utterly fails me when I attempt to rid myself of these pests. Possibly I may use this suit during the summer, and I will wear these shoes around the garden in the spring. Truly I am a coward!

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!!' iff I WK H, r iv 4? 'I i.f,.L-Q f, Q' ' G the cycle of the year there comes a time, more often to some households than to others, alas! too often to my own, in which the sacred household gods are trampled under the hurrying feet of red- facec scrub-women, and swept ruthlessly out of doors by the active brooms of smut-hesmothered matrons in blue calico turbans. I am, I can say, truly do- mestic, and my nature is therefore much upset by these regular excavations. I am really quite a dreamer, and would prefer to live in rooms festooned with cohwebs than to undergo the confusion accom- panying their removal. I have always had a strange fellow-feeling for cobwebs that I never could explaing and therefore when I see them, my friends, being .X swept out along with the ill-fated gods, I am strange- ly moved to pity. Even in my early childhood a strange fancy grew upon me. It took that form which fancies and hobbies often assume-of a propensity for collecting. My youthful feet roamed through away from the beaten paths of respectability. I sought the obscure-that which might turn up in out-of-the-way localities, or which might be turned up by my plying feet from the depths of smoulder- ing bonfires or rain bedampened trash heaps. In thinking over this precocious pro- pensity, I am at a loss to determine whether my natural desire for dirt, or my ever- present wish for the foreign--something different from the everyday life of work- aday rnortals-was to hlameg but be that as it may, the spoils of these byway forays, in the form of anything from charred dumb-bells to cracked crockery, assumed pro- portions delightful to my young self, yet frightful to my guardian elders. Indeed, so vicious became the threats against these, my possessions, that as that fateful time, so disheartening to the spiders and gods, as well as to myself, once more was near at hand, I mounted guard in the toy-room, and assuming a Napoleonic posture, strode moodily up and down, defying any mortal to part me from my beloved pos- sessions. That day of din and satanic confusion did come at last, and I watched with dark alleys and wandered Ihe Discard Br I1Al WHITE

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IWTU ' I I 'truer sms ' Y IVNUMI HOURS' ma rs., p Q s 5 I0 r X A short time since, my wife, indeed a wily woman, inveigled, persuaded, or The drove me-I do not know which method she employed most-into moving. If there is one thing that displeases me more than house-cleaning, it is moving. It is more nearly fatal to the household gods-and also to myself. A day or so previous to this mad household eruption I met a kind and much respected friend on the street. I hear, he said, that you are soon to go through with an ordeal. I told him that I was, and that it was with great reluctance. Well, then, said he, let me offer a bit of advice. My home has always been over-stocked, and I was too weak to discard. But the last time I moved I sunnnoned all my courageg I did throw out my trapsg I burned, burned, burned, and now I'm ireeiyou don't know how good it feels to be free l These timely words of advice fitted in so perfectly with what I myself was thinking that I turned back from the errand I was then on, and with the words ringing in my ears, set out for my home, resolved to be free, at last, after many years of abject slavery. As I walked rapidly, my excited mind preceded me to where an enormous pack of old papers and letters rested together with many other odds and ends up in my room, and my breast heaved with grim determination to burn, east out, and destroy. Soon I burst into my room, still filled with that wild desire. Iliad madly grabbed up an armload of papers and had viciously crammed them into a basket, when lol my eyes fell upon a tiny pink envelope that I had dropped. I quietly sat down upon the floor and opened the note. My fraud strangely trembled as I read. I could not throw away this note-why, it was from-well, it does not matter from whom. No, I would save it. I resumed my task, with zeal much abated, and slowly sorted over the rubbish at my feet. At length, arising, stiff- kneed and weary, I compared the saved with the cast out. It was ridiculous! I picked up the little handful of papers to be burned-how small, how very small- and went my way. The result of it is that my roof still shelters that enormous pack of old papers, those odds and ends and what-nets, and will continue to do so, I suppose, until someone else falls heir to themg but even then they may remain as keepsakes. g Discard