Towson University - Tower Echoes Yearbook (Towson, MD)

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Qg'F'Tt1!2i'f. T'jfg,ji If , s , . V . ,L . Q, A I ul., . H.. THE TOWER LIGHT 1 Sinbad the Sailor, of the Arabian Nights tale, made seven voy- ages to acquire riches. As is the case with three, seven is found a great deal in the old British ballads. E Shakespeare, in his play, As You Like It, speaks of the seven ages of man. Mother Goose has given the children the stories of The Seven Sisters and The Seven Dwarves. Here too, we End the old St. Ives Riddle: As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Every wife had seven sacks, Every sack had seven cats, Every cat had seven kits 5 Kits, cats, sacks, and wives, How many were going to St. Ives? The reader is also probably familiar with Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables and Cohan's Seven Keys to Baldpate. There are seven red stripes in the American Flag. In music, we find seven again. There are seven diferent tones in every diatonic scale, the eighth is a double of the first. Musical history tells us that along about the beginning of the seventeenth century, di Lasso Calso written Lassusj composed his most famous work Cwhich still existsD-' 'Seven Penetential Psalms. And clon't forget the fateful meaning of seven dots on a pair of bone cubes used in the well-known game of African Golf. judging from the writer's brief reviews of the numbers three and seven, the former seems to be used more frequently. However, this con- clusion may be found faulty by one who has more experience. Even so, the fact that seven is used over and over again, and in so many different places, seems to prove that seven has some special significance. E. M., Fourth Year Senior. 655495 An extension class at the University of Hawaii holds its classes on the rim of a volcano so that the students may better study botany, geology, and volcanic phenomena. Yes, and at some later date Newton's law of gravity. 25

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. ' THE TOWER LIGHT Today in many of our churches, we still have the seven-branched candlestick. Before we leave the discussion of seven in the Bible, it may be in- tersting to note that there are seven recognized bibles. These are the Bible of the Christians, Eddas of the Scandinavians, Five Kings of the Chinese, Tri Pitikes of the Buddhists, Koran of the Mohammedans, three Vedas of the Hindus, and Zendavesta of the Persians. There were the Seven Champions of Christendom: St. George of England, who was imprisoned by the Black King of Morocco for seven years, St. Denys of France, who lived for seven years in the form of a deer, St. james of Spain, who was seven years dumb, out of love for a fair Jewess , St. Anthony of Italy, who was rescued from his spell of deep sleep by the three sons of St. George who put out the magic fire of the seven lamps with water from the enchanted fountain, St. Andrew of Scotland, who delivered six ladies who had lived seven years under the form of white, swans , St. Patrick of Ireland, and St. David of Wales who was released from his enchanted sleep of seven years' dura- tion by St. George. It is believed by some that there are seven planes to heaven. Ancient wise men who dabbled in the more or less lpseudo-chemis- try of their time, expounded these seven bodies of alc emy: the Sun, gold, the Moon, silver, Mars, iron, Mercury, quicksilver, Saturn, lead, Jupiter, tin, and Venus, copper. Greece had seven sages: Solon of Athens, Chilo of Sparta, Thales of Miletos, Bias of Priene, Cleobulos of Lindos, Pittacos of Mitylene, and Periander of Corinth. H Then there is the constellation which ancients of the Eastern Hem- isphere called The Seven Sisters, and ancients of the Western Hem- isphere thought of as The Seven Brothers. No doubt, you have often wondered just exactly how many Seven Wonders of the World there are. At our last count, there were at least twenty-one Ca multiple of sevenj. First, there are the Ancient Seven Wonders : the Pyramids of Egypt, the Babylonian Gardens, the Tomb of Mausolus, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the statue of jupiter at Elis, and the Palace of Cyrus. Next, we have the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages: the Colosseum at Rome, the Catacombs at Alexandria, the great wall of China, the ruins at Stone- henge, England, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Porcelain Tower of Nanlcing, and the Mosque to St. Sophia at Constantinople. Recently, anonymous birth appears to have been given to a brand new set of Seven Wonders - The Seven Wonders of the New World. These are Niagara Falls, Yellowstone National Park, the Garden of the Gods, Mammoth Cave, Yosemite Valley, the Giant Redwoods of Washington Oregon, and California, and Natural Bridge. 24

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THE TOWER LIGHT, Thar She B1-o-o-ows ! LD-TIME whaling boats were not large vessels, about one hun- dred thirty feet long and twenty-six feet broad, they carried a crew of thirty men. Consequently, some of the biggest whales were about two-thirds as long as the ships that hunted them. This fact called forth a story that once a whaler was sunk by a whale that rushed at her and stove in her sides. Nothing that these ships carried was more important than the whaleboats. A whaling ship carried from four to seven whaleboats strung to timber davits along the two sides of the ship, all ready to be lowered into the water. Their sides sloped upward toward the pointed ends, so that too much water could not dash into them while they rushed along, towed by a whale. Usually a whaleboat carried a mast and a sail so that it could get close to the whale without the noise that oars and rowlocks made. This was a wise precaution because, while whales are not much alarmed by what they see, they are easily fright- ened away by what they hear. When fishing for whales, the whaling ship Cusually a barquel would cruise around the waters where the whales lived. Now whales have to come to the surface to breathe, and when they do, they blow a column of spray high into the air. As soon as a man, posted at the head of the foremast in a sort of barrel, would see this spouting, he would cry out, There she blows, which sounded like this, Thar she bloo-oo-ows! Bloo-oo-ows! Immediately the ship was steered in the direction he pointed. When near enough, the men piled into their whaleboats and rowed close to the whale. In the bow of each stood a man with a harpoon, which was a sharp, heavy spear attached to a long, strong line. Six other men pulled on the oars, and another stood at the stern, steering with an oar. At the right moment the harpoon was thrown deerp into the whale. Away the whale dashed, diving deep into the sea. he line that was loosely coiled in a tub at the stern of the boat ran out like lightning, sometimes so fast that it smoked. As it shot out, away went the boat, towed along at a great speed by the wounded whale. Sometimes a whale would fight a whole day for his life and carry a boat miles away from a ship. But in the end the whale would be killed, and the men would either row back to the barque, towing the whale behind, or else signal the ship to sail to them. The rest of the work included cutting the whale and hoisting the valuable parts aboard the ship where it was prepared for storage until the end o the voyage. On the trip home the ship was filled with thou- sands of barrels of whale oil and many tons of whalebone. '26