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Page 11 text:
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cA Glance backward. Wt arc stronger, and arc better. Un ter manhood' »terner reign: Still we tecl that aomethiag »weet Followed youth, with dying feet And will never come again. SO sing . the poet. As there can be but one youth in the life of an individual, so there can be but one in the life of a school. In this brief backward glance do not expect me to exalt overmuch because we have got so far away from the day of small things. That day had its charm as well as its profit. A charm not unlike that of living in a home, as compared with that of living in a large hotel. One with only small gifts in the way of making acquaintances, could not remain long unknown when small classes recited to the same professor in Latin. Civics. Sentential Analysis, Geography and Trigonometry. Another instructor taught Physiology, Grammar, United States History, Rhetoric, English Literature, besides supervising the writing of the essays and conducting the rehearsals of them. The institute conductor, when not afield, carried Reading. Spelling. Music, Word Analysis, and Literary Criticism. Under these conditions, the following conversation, which actually took place in '97. could not have occurred in 71: Teacher: May I trouble you, Miss S.. to take this message to Prof. H.? Miss .S’.: I don’t know which one of the teachers l‘r f. H. is. Teacher: Don't know Prof. 11.! You have been in school all the year, haven't you? Miss S.: Yes. Teacher: Prof. H. has sat upon the rostrum every morning since last September. Miss .S'.: Undoubtedly ; still I don't know which one lie is. George Eliot speaks of the lost delicious leisure of the olden times. One can easily see how it has been lost in the Oshkosh Normal School. In the early '70s Commencement was a very simple thing. The teachers and students kept on the even tenor of their way until about three days before the close of the school year. Then recitations were suspended, and students wrote both fore and afternoon until their examinations were completed. Then a very few people read some very good essays, the school chorus furnished some music, it was delightful to hear, and the work and
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Page 12 text:
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pleasures of the year were in the past. No. not quite. There was a pleasant evening at President Albee's. where the strawberries and ice cream, which were eaten preferably upon the porch, were followed by good-bys and best wishes, and all retired in time for a good rest before taking the early trains for home. Just think of it! No school annual published, no commencement number of the Normal Advance, no inter-societv debate, no junior reception, no annual excursion, no class day program, no banquet, no- very few failures in examination. Then there was time for study and for doing the work required by the course. Then the teachers had a chance to work for and with their classes, instead of being occupied with the work assigned them by some of the many committees into which the school organizes itself during the latter half of the school year. A Shakcsperian entertainment was correspondingly simple in those days. No orchestra was needed, no stage costumes, no varied scenery illuminated by foot-lights and border lights, no weary weeks of rehearsals. Oh. no; instead of all this elaborate preparation, the professor who had charge of the Shakespeare work, appeared before his class after it had begun its examination for the afternoon—so that no time should be taken from regular work—and asked the members to report at the library at 7:30 that evening and to read the parts he then assigned them. Previ u to this, and unknown to the class, a few invitations had been written and sent to some of the clergymen of the city and to other persons known to have some interest in the writings of the great bard. At the appointed time, guests and students assembled in the seclusion of the library and there shut away from the world’s harsher noises, the lines of Julius Caescr or The Merchant of Venice were interpreted with all the appreciation and skill at the command of the little company. The fact that many wished to come who were not admitted was glory enough for those furnishing the program ; and the guests but why trouble ourselves about them ? They never bolted or made any other violent demonstration that I ever heard of. In those days when there were no street cars of any kind, and few steam laundries and coal furnaces, students got a great deal of exercise incidentally the way in which all culture is secured. I believe. The indirect way had some advantages. It relieved the state of the expense of covering a large j ortion of the campus with long, low. dull-red structures, whose use is but faintly suggested by their appearance. It also relieved the students from turning out in a bodv upon Saturday afternoon always a busv time in a week to exercise nine or eleven men—depending upon the time of the year by shouting loudly enough to overcome their inertia, or to warm their sluggish blood by the bright glances of hundreds of admiring eyes. Oh yes, those dull, quiet unenterprising days, when there was some time to en joy what was pleasant have gone; and in their place have come—but I refer you to the pages of this annual to determine that.
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