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

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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

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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

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As one turns through the remain- ing pages of the book he sees cotton- tails variously clad and often equip- ped with traveling bag and umbrel- la. Some play hide-and-seek ; oth- ers, closely resembling porcupines, are sporting amidst dumps of cac- tus in the vicinity of a milestone. On the page preceding the Fresh- man section there appears a very long-eared rabbit climbing a tree and silhouetted against a blood- red moon. At the beginning of the Junior section sits a meditative cotton-tail, highly illuminated on the side away from the rising or setting moon, which seems to be scrutinizing some object, a very peculiar botanical specimen remotely resembling the Yucca, dimly outlined on the shadowy landscape. (Note again the symbolism.) Could this be interpreted as a prophetic vision? And did the artist draw more truly than she knew? In addition to the cotton-tail and the cotton plant, other mem- bers of the animal and the plant kingdoms were sacrificed upon the altar of art. The head of an owl, emblem of wisdom, forms the center of the colophon at the end of the Senior section. A spider ' s web with the spinner included serves as the background of The Cotton-Tail staff pictures. Somehow the busy bee, with all his energetic suggestiveness, escaped. Perhaps lack of time accounts for his absence. The Seniors look forth from backgrounds of morn- ing glories, daisies, daffodils, thistles, and wheat. Clover burrs and prickly pears are also included in the artistic botanical exhibit. Lack of space forbids the consideration of other interesting aspects of the first Annual. Some virtues, no doubt, it had, in spite of its obvious crudities and other shortcomings. First of all, The Cotton-Tail, as the pioneer yearbook of the Normal, served as an object lesson to the students of later years of what the 21