Towson University - Tower Echoes Yearbook (Towson, MD)

Page 30 text:

he lower Light Published monthly by the students of the Maryland State Normal School at Towson STUDENT EDITORS Editors Alumni Editors MARGUERITE SIMMONS E. LASSELL RITTENHOUSE JULIUS SEEMAN MARY ANN DOUGLAS Business Manager FLORA VODENOS Circulation Managers Advertising Managers MARGARET CLAYTOR MARY BUCHER RUTH HALE HELENE ZIEGLER DEPARTMENT EDITORS Athletics Assembly General Literature SELMA TYSER RUTH KOLATA MARY-STEWART LEWIS Poetry S . l Secretarial Staj: DOROTHY BOTHE Om' HILDA FARBMAN , EDITH BEALL Science E BEATRICE WINER LEANOR BRUEHL EDNA IKENA LEE YENKMAN Library Faculty Representative Iokes ETHEL TROYER MARY DIMARcANToNIo SARA LEVIN 351.50 per year 20 cents per copy ALICE MUNN, Managing Editor You and I ACH person should mind his own business. However, there are times when we hear conversations without any conscious attempt on our part. Therefore, I shall relate this story as I heard it. Listen, Jack, I came back to school to study this year. I know, if my memory serves me right, you've said that for the last couple of years, Harry. However, your scholastic average was even lower than mine last year. 20

Page 29 text:

THE TOWER LIGHT Alumni Notes LEVEN former graduates have returned to the school this year, to take the additional year oifered them. Now, the problem is,- are THE ELEVEN Alumni, or are they mere students? Must they be treated with the respect and veneration due those of advanced years and ripened wisdom, or may one knock them down while rushing into the library, and stand on their toes on crowded street cars Qas one would naturally do with men studentsj? If it is decided that these Eleven belong to the state of Alumni, then you must not address them as Hey, you! , but call them prettily by name. For your edification we print their names below. Doris Deppenbrock Mary Di Marcantonio Virginia Weinland Margaret Ijams Catherine Pistel Gwendolyn Michael Mary Muller Dorothy Washburne Ruth Bohanon Virginia Evans Anne Sugar We are told that Pat Stinchcum and Martha Alford go roller skating about town-getting childish experience first hand? Virginia Beach writes from Florida that she basks in the sun, all the time. We will envy her this winter, when we don our galoshes. Edward Gersuk took some summer courses at Columbia, during vacation. Luella Klug, Gladys Krause, Martha Alford, Dorothy Berndt and Mary Douglas had a most delightful trip in a row boat, on the Severn River. The greater part of the day was spent in pursuing a circular motion, from all accounts. They say the trouble was a pair of mis- matched oars. 19

Page 31 text:

THE TOWER LIGHT Well, I must admit I have said this before, but this time Iim going to turn over a new leaf and show you that I can get better grades than either you, Howard, or Louf' When the last words of the above conversation had been uttered I could almost see Confucius writhing in his grave, and I seemed to hear faint guttural grumbles emanating from the resting places of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. As if Wafted on the cushioned billows of the air, I even think I heard Sophocles utter in despair, All things are noisome when a man deserts His own true self and does not what is Meet. Confucius had been one of the first to teach that great and basic truth Know Thyselff' Ever since, great men and great women have either absorbed this maxim as their daily creed, or have, after long years of patient striving for wisdom, reached the same ultimate conclusion. Let us attempt to follow this illuminating thread through the ages and up to the present. That great era of civilization of the ancient Greeks which pro- duced such geniuses as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, and a host of others contributed to it. Let us listen to Socrates who gives the View of many others. The unexamined life is a life not worth living. The next step in the evolution of man's advancement received its impetus in the Renaissance. The assertion of individualism-which had been sublimated during the dark ages-was now manifested. Men like Roger Bacon, Wyclif, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Abelard, Bunyan, and others, urged the people to cultivate themselves, especially their reasoning faculties. Abelard wrote a book, Know Thyselff' Since a great writer crystallizes, in a sense, the opinions and feelings of his age, Abelard's book is significant. In the age of enlightenment, Milton, Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Spencer and others contributed to this illuminating thread. Our own Benjamin Franklin searched himself and, as you remember, in his auto- biography, he says: I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined, but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish. In the nineteenth century, Emerson contributed much to this doc- trine. In his Self-Reliance he states: There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is igno- rance, that imitation is suicide, that he must take himself for better, or for worse, as his portion, that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him hut through his toil bestowed on the plot of ground which is given to him to till. if The power that resides in him is new in nature, and none but he, knows what 21