University of North Texas - Yucca Yearbook (Denton, TX)

Page 23 text:

and Beautiful Thoughts sixty-seven quotations that seemed suffi- ciently inappropriate and flattering to the members of the Senior class, write these quotation ' s on slips of paper, mix them well in a hat, draw one for each member of the class, and affix said quotation beneath the name and opposite the picture of each Senior. A glance at this section of The Cotton-Tail will give evidence suf- ficient of this effective means of characterization. The method had at least the virtue of being expeditious, and time was precious. Meanwhile, the business managers were seeking engravers and publishers who would at that late date take the contract to publish the annual. After much coaxing, contracts advantageous to the publishers were made. The material was hastily bundled together and sent to the engravers and the publishers. Later, the proofs were as hastily examined and approved and hurried back. The staff heaved a sigh of relief and waited, trusting that, by some miracle in the process of printing, the finished book would appear a work of art. The Cotton-Tail, the embodiment of all the hopes, fears, and mistakes of the staff, finally arrived for distribution during Com- mencement week. It was a slender volume of exactly one hundred pages, bound in a gray and green board cover. Truly, like man, it was fearfully and wonderfully made. And still the wonder grows as time separates the reviewer from this his first literary effort. Artistically considered, it is indeed a marvel of symbolism in what is not art and of nature faking. BuJ, reader, before you criticize too severely, consider the name by which the first Annual was handicapped and the limitations of the cotton-tail motif in artistic expression. Such minor considerations as perspective, light and shade, proportion, and color harmony were left to the ingenu- ity and whimsical imagination of the individual artist. Certainly the spice of variety is apparent throughout the volume. 19

Page 22 text:

The staff was soon organized into committees to still-hunt this erstwhile seemingly plentiful genius. In feverish haste each member of the staff set to work studying other school annuals as models. The editor-in-chief and the art editors, working under the direction of the optimistic and ever-patient teacher of Drawing, literally spent their days and nights with Uncle Remus, searching for appropriate and artistic uses of the cotton-tail motif. Easter cards and designs afforded some hints as to the artistic possibilities of the cotton-tail. Every student who could draw a creature even remotely resembling a cotton-tail was encouraged — yea, begged — to expend his best efforts, with the assurance that whatever manner of quad- ruped he limned, his drawing would be sure of acceptance by the art editors. The drawing room soon took on the semblance of a veritable warren, so numerous were the cotton-tails in all stages of disguise, unlikeness, and contortion. Every member of every English class was assigned a class poem, class prophecy, class letter, or other literary representation. Classes were corralled and marched almost under guard to photographers to have their pictures made. Clubs and all other school organizations were begged, coaxed, and threatened in an attempt to get them to take space in the Annual and have their pic- tures made. Each member of the Faculty was besought for his photograph, and all cheerfully responded. Two members of the staff were detailed to cull out of Forty Thousand Sublime is

Page 24 text:

The flora and fauna of The Cotton-Tail are truly wonder- ful. On the outside of the front cover, two long-eared rabbits, very black as to their bodies and very white as to their tails — the shadow of their bodies does not dim the whiteness — sit close huddled, facing a rising or settin sun or moon. (Time has proved — note the sym- bolism — that it was a setting luminary.) Over these sombre, westward-facing bunnies a wondrous plant — a cotton plant it was no doubt intended to represent — leans shelteringly and suggestively. These lugubrious cotton-tails and the symbolic sheltering stalk rest on a ground that resembles nothing so much as the surface of a glassy sea or frozen lake. Though the rabbits cast each a dark shadow, the wondrous cotton plant does not. (A splendid instance of artistic license, is it not?) The word COTTONTAIL, printed in large black letters vertically at the left of the cover design ren- ders the drawing thoroughly intelligible. Within the book, the artistic adaptations and contortions of the cotton-tail are scarcely less marvelous. On the greeting page a gigantic stork holds suspended from its beak an infant bunny so ingeniously posed that both his face and his very white fluff of a tail are toward the beholder. The suggestion of physical torture gives one a crick in his neck as he looked at this poor little twisted bunny. On the contents page a begowned and be-mortar-boarded Senior girl shows to three cottontails a tome entitled The Cotton- Tail Who Would Go to the Normal. The more pensive of the three squats in the foreground, and from his eye there trickles a monstrous tear. Was it in pity shed? Or was there revealed to this little creature what was concealed from the wise staff and student body, namely, the brief existence and early death and supplanting of this infant publication which bore its name and whose page it adorned? Is there so great power of divination among bunnies? M