University of Maryland Baltimore Dental School - Mirror Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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three fairy angels, one called Wit, the other Humor, and the third Fun; and they had come to help us learn our lessons. Now — I never had seen an angel before and only had heard grandpa speak of the angel who drove him and Grandma Eve from Paradise. So I would have been afraid, but I could not because the three fairies (or angels, I don ' t know which,) at once commenced to tell stories such as we had never heard before and draw such pictures on the big slate as we never had seen. And then they showed us how to dance and jump and do somersaults, and all kinds of nonsense. But the best thing was wdien they took an old broomstick, wrapped some rags around it, which they shaped into legs and arms and put on top an apple (grandma had given it to me; she knows something about apples) which they had cut and fixed up so that it just looked like our old teacher. And when they then made that thing walk just like teacher does, and when one imitated his voice so that you thought you heard him scold and thunder, then suddenly I got such a peculiar feeling in my face as I never had experienced to that day. Before I knew it my whole body commenced to shake and I had to cry out something like: Ha, ha, ha! and in a minute the whole class did the same, only the girls said: He, he, he! and from some of the boys it sounded like: Ho, ho, ho! And the fairies they did the same and called out: ' Now we have taught you to laugh; never forget it and never forget your good friends: Wit, Humor and Fun. ' While we were yet laughing the fairies disappeared, but we were in such a happy frame of mind that we went to work with a will, and when teacher came he was surprised at the result of our labors. We never told him who had helped us. This wonderful inscription on the slate unmistakably proves that Humor, Wit and Fun were born when the first school had been established. And from that day to this they have been fostered and cultivated in all institutions of learning, though chiefly when ' ' teacher is absent. 16

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but since Mark Twain succeeded in deciphering what is most likely the oldest of these writings, scientists have made considerable progress in the reading of these old documents. The writer has been fortunate enough to unearth some slates covered with the hieroglyphics of one who seems to have been a grown up school boy living in the first century of the creation of the world. It may be of interest to the college boy (and college girl) of our era to hear how things progressed in those olden times. What this young man writes on one slate is this: O I wish the good Lord had not created so many animals and so many plants, mountains and rivers; and I wish old Grandpa Adam had not given names to all of them which we poor children now have to learn at school. It is awful to sit here for hours and hours and study what teacher calls natural history, and geography, and arithmetic, and spelling, and lots of other stuff. None of the boys like it, nor do the girls either. Other slates are filled with similar complaints and expressions of disgust, but one stone has been found on which the following remarkable and highly interesting data are inscribed: Yesterday teacher got real mad because not one of us knew his lesson, and when dinner time came he went off, locking us all up in the school-room, saying that he would not let us out until we knew it all, not if it were to take all day and all night. Well — there was great lamentation; the girls cried and the boys, too, though they tried to hide it, but this did not do any good. So we attempted to learn our lessons, but with empty stomachs and tearful eyes it was no go, and I think teacher would have had to keep us in all night had not something happened that had never occurred before. I don ' t know where they came from, but all at once there stood in the room three beings. I think they were women, though I am not sure about it. They were dressed very differently from what we are, and the girls said it was fancy, whatever that may be. Anyhow the three looked very strange and said they were

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Indeed, not all teachers realize the aid given them in their labors by the three fairies. But the students know it; they fully appreciate that the digestion of intellectual food is immensely aided when seasoned with wit and humor, with fun and mirth. This is the reason why this volume has been written, and this is its injunction: ' Understand, enjoy and laugh with But take me not too seriously. MWL