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

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Annual should not be. Most mistakes were so patent that they could easily be detected and avoided. And it is gratifying to see how rapidly and consistently the Annual has improved from the year following to the present. For whatever negative instruction this initial venture may have afforded, the first staff claim some modest share of the credit. It is especially interesting to note that a woman editor was chosen the next year to correct the errors that her man predecessor had made. This sketch would lack completeness if no mention were made of the hoodoo that attended The Cotton-Tail. In the first place, Mr. Kendall, the beloved President of the Normal, to whom the Annual was dedicated, died at the beginning of the following ses- sion. Later in that session, the yearbook was rechristened The Yucca, and The Cotton-Tail was no more. Finally, even the name of the Kendall-Bruce Literary Society, of which The Cotton- Tail editor-in-chief had been a member, was changed to Robert E. Lee. Truly, for the Normal, as well as for the bunny, one ' Cotton- Tail ' was enough. 22

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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

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