Temple University - Templar Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

Page 18 text:

To the Memory of Elsa Faust Elsa Faust The following paragraphs are selected from a memorial of Miss Faust published in the Temple Review for April 27th, 1900 There is a dedication in one of Dr. Henry Van Dyke’s books that I should like to apply to Elsa Faust: “To a young-woman of an old fashion, who loves art not for its own sake, but because it ennobles life; who reads poetry not to kill time, but to fill it with beautiful thoughts, and who still be-lieves in God, Duty and Immortal Love.” 12

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Robert Pattison Sensenderfer Katharine Rinker Walters Earnest Thornton Williams Joseph Harper Williams William Woods Theodore Charles Wolf .1 u I. I A K E i fs n v i k r MKDJCIAI, ESSAYIST Absent when Class Picture was taken II

Page 19 text:

I want to base what I have to record about Elsa Faust upon this short, but most suggestive, description. Notice her—tall, strong figure, with head held well up, and with quick, elastic step. Coloring dark, with eyes that gave immediate response and were deep enough for dreams to live in. Sec her greet friends right and left; catch again in memory the tone of that healthy laugh. To laugh so from out a jxire soul makes the world brighter. No student of mine ever responded more thoroughly, not only to the best that I could give, but to the best that the great books brought her. Last autumn, when her class were reading from Tennyson and from Milton, one could not but remark the mastery that the poets attained over Elsa. Her face would lighten, her soul thrill as we read line after line of matchless verse. The poems became to her a rich delight, a treasury of all beautiful thoughts. ❖ Beauty awakened Elsa Faust—beauty in poetry, beauty in nature, and beauty in music. No mean soul ever loved music. Poetry is triumphant art, but music, as Browning so aptly teaches in ‘‘Abt Vogler,” is the touch of the finger of God. Melody is born in heaven. Music passes out of art and art’s laws, and builds a palace all heavenly. To the study of music Elsa gave from two to four hours each day. Schumann, Bach, but especially Mozart, were her favorites' In music, as in letters, her enthusiasm and ambition knew no bounds. The more difficult inventions of Bach stirred her determination to master them. Her exercise book in nar-mony shows the same untiring fidelity and accuracy char- 13