Wakefield High School - Oracle Yearbook (Wakefield, MA)

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THE W. H. S. DEBATER Musical Stones How many of my readers know that common stones and rocks can peal fortli the most beautiful musical tones? The credit of discovering this fact belongs to Alonzo R. Oilman of South Berwick, Maine. Out of rocks and stones he has made an instrument, know as the Rockophone, capable of producing musical tones. This Rockophone, the only one of its kind in the world, is now at Hampstead, New Hampshire, and it was here that I had the pleasure of seeing it and of hearing several familiar tunes played on it. One day, while Mr. Oilman was in the woods, he picked ui) a stone which had iron in it, and upon hitting it with a steel hammer, he was surprised at the sweet- sounding vibrations. It occurred to him that there might be music as well as sermons in stones and that if several could be found which had variations, a tune could be played. He set, immediately, to work out his idea and in eight months he hitd found eight stones with which he was able to play a ditty. Having found these, he was spurred on to gather more, and so for seventeen long years he collected cart- loads of stones, testing each stone and throwing out those which had no musical sound. All the stones which Mr. Oilman used in making his wonderful Rockophone were found in Maine and New Hampshire in stone-walls, along the roadside or in fields. All stones except marble, slate and granite, in Maine and New Hampshire, contain iron pyrites and it is from this, that the tone comes. From the thin, long stones. the highest pitches are given, and from the tiiick, heavy stones, the deep bass sounds are obtained. He arranged the stones the same as the keys on the piano except that they rest on small rubber tubes which lit into grooves in the steel frames. The rubber is used to help the vibration, for if the stones rested (m a hard surface, such as steel, the sound would be deadened. The stones which make up this instrimnent vary in length from six inches to three feet and weigh from one to fifty pounds. It was after he had arranged the stones in their fi-ames, that he built the case in which they rest. The frame, which is box-shape, is twelve feet in length and tiiree and one-half feet in width. It is of white- wood stained green. People have urged Mr. Oilman to patent his Rocko- phone, but he has refused to do so. Thus the oppor- tunity of making one of these instruments is open to anyone who has the patience and the sensitive ear for music which are required to do the work successfully. Ruth W. Boardman, ' 14. We ouolit to have a fire drill every recess wlien G. B. j oes up in the helfr} ' . The Teaching of English at Home and at School AN English Conference was held by the Kosmos Club on March 6, under the auspices of the New England Association of Teachers of English — Mr. Samuel Thur- ber of Newtonville, chairman of the committee on con- ferences, presided. The theme of the conference, The Teachiig of P ng- lish at Home and at School , was discussed under three topics: first, The Point of View of the Teacher ; second, Problems of the Parent ; and third, What shall our Children Read ? The first topic, The Point of View of the Teacher, was discussed in a very able manner by Mr. Charles Swain Thomas, head of the English department at the Newton High School. Mr. Thomas is also educational editor for Houghton- HtHin, and one of the authors of the Thomas and Howe Rhetoric , used in our High School. Mr. Thomas, who is well acquainted with chil- dren both as a teacher and as a father, told his views based upon his own expeiiences. He considers a child lucky if his parents know what is right in English and have a care that he shall learn what is right. He believes that children should be seen and heard and that mental training while the chihl is young is of more importance than grammatical correctness. The parents who care about the language of a child will also guard the literature which he reads. A child will bi ' influenced for life by the impressions that he receives while young. For instance, if a child reads a great deal about fairies and sprites. Iiis imagination will become keen and active ; if he reads history and patriarchal literature, sternness and severity will become his traits. Mr. Thomas said, Watch the moving-picture shows carefully. If they do good for the child and raise his mental powers, encourage him to go. If they are bad and lower his power of phrasing, keep him away. The same is true of the theatre . One should use his own judgment as to what is beneficial and what is not. Surely, no one can listen to Forbes Robertson without deriving benefit from his clear enunciation. Mr. Thomas believes that what a person thinks has great infiuence upon the physical nature. If a person is careless in thinking, his voice will become displeasing to the ear. He stated the ease of two sisters of his ac- quaintance. While young, their voices were remarkably alike. In the course of time, one of these sisters be- came a rich woman, cultivated and refined. The other was obliged to live in poverty and ignorance. There is now a great contrast in the tones of their voices ; the one, soft and cultured ; the other, disagreeable and nasal. One nnist not be heedless in voice training. The

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TIIK W. II. S. DKUATKR A Sardine Factory IT was a peculiar bnildina;, tlie factory, and wlion I first saw it I stood still and looked. It was a low-studded building, built on the slope of the shore in such a way that one story was seen from the front and two from the back. The sides were clapboarded and painted red. The roof, which was nearly flat, was nearly covered with tar paper. A tall chimney, made of a red clay drain pipe, had forced its way through one end of the building and was calmly belching forth smoke. A bi ' oad w oden walk, nearly as wide as the street, led to the corner of the building where one half of it seemed to enter and the other continued to the back of the building. I took this latter walk and made my M ' ay to the rear of the factory. Here, a short wharf drew my attention. It was a narrow wharf, covered almost wholly with fishing tackle and filth, except for one little place at the further end. This place, however, served as the site for a small red building, which contained a pumping ma- chine. A small wooden canal, about a foot wide and fifteen Indies deep, led from the pumping station to the factory. The canal was raised to the height of eight feet above the wharf. It sloped gently toward the main building until it was within a lew feet of its destination and here it dropped sharply. The wooden bottom had been removed Ironi the top of this sharp decline and a piece of wire netting inserted. I dill not understand this arrangement, so I made some inquiries. In answer to my questions, I was told that the canal was used for fioating the sardines, which are really Utile herrings, into the factory. It seems that the fish are brought to the factor} ' in small tug-boats. A big hose is lowered into the hold of the tug and the fish are pumped, by means of the pumping station, into the canal. Water is pumped into the canal at the same time and the fish are fioated to the sharp dip ; here the water runs through the wire netting and the fish slide into the build- ing and into tanks l)uilt to receive them. The floor inside the factory was made of cement, and it was covered with water and sUme. The tanks, I found, were situated near the door. They were made of heavy planks and the inside, which was about four feet wide, eight feet long and five feet deep, was lined with zinc. They were, at that time, full of tish and water. They did not remain full very long, however, because a sort of wire escalator, which led upstairs, was carrying off an endless stream of fish. This interested me and I went up-stairs. I found that the end of the escalator was spreading the fish on tlakers. Flakers are wire trays which are about three feet long and two feet wide and look like wire letter trays with the sides cut oft ' . As soon as one of the Makers is covered with fish it is removed and an empty one is put in its place. The loaded flakers are put into a tall rack, which holds about forty of them. I watched this process for some time until I noticed that the racks which were full were being i)ushed off to some other part of the building. I followed one of the racks and learned that it was puslied into a vault, which was almost exactly like a vault in a bank. When the vault contained a sufficient number of racks, it was closed and bolted, and steam was turned on. Tiiis, of course, after a short time, cooked the fish. The steam was then turned oft ' and the racks removed into a cooling room. A big electric fan was inserted in the wall of the cooling room. The blades of this fan were turned so that it drew the air from the room, thereby causing a terriflc drauglit. The draught was so strong that, at a distance of six feet, it would draw one ' s hair out straight. It always seemed strange to me that it did not draw the fish out of doors. It can easily be imag- ined, however, that the fish were soon cooled oft ' . From here the fish were taken into a large room full of girls. Each girl stood befoie a little bench. Every- one was busy and I was quite startled when a girl, who was working at a bench near which I was standing, turned suddenly and cried Fish. A boy iinmeciiately rushed over with a flaker full of cooked and cooled fish, and gave it to her in exchange for her empty one. She at once picked up a small pair of scissors and cut off the head of every fish on the flaker. Siie then packed the fish, just as they were, into cans of oil or mustard. The heads were thrown into a receptacle for that purpose. These receptacles were emptied, at certain intervals, into a wheelbarrow. The fish heads were then carried outside and deposited in a large bin, from which they were sold to the farmers, for fertilizer, at fifteen cents a barrel. The fish themselves, now in little boxes, were sent to sealing machines. Here, covers were juit on the boxes and the machines sealed them air tight. The machine, after it had sealed the boxes, threw them into a barrel. They were then taken down stairs and rccooked. This second cooking was to see if the cans were air tight. If any air was enclosed in a can, the heat expanded it and it caused the cover to bulge. When this happened, the can was thrown away. If, however, the cover remained fixed, the wrappers and stickers were put on and the can of sardines was ready for the market. Eaui,k SxKWAirr, ' 14. I wonder if a teacher ever i ets sol ' t-liearti ' d and boosts a fellow l)y l)ee:iiise lie pleads terror of tin- paternal frown ; or bc- cause he oll ' ers to ohlisje the teacher in some way. .Anyway, tlie teacher should consider whether the fellow can keep his word or not, if only to he business like.

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TIIK W. II. S. DKIJATKR practise of reading aloud doubles the powers of oral interpretation. Mr. Tlionias next spoke of the child ' s vocabulary. He said, We are careful to store up pennies for the child ' s bank, but we are careless about his word-hord. The avernoe person has about three thousand words in his vocabulary. Shakespeare, as we know, had fifteen thousand and Milton, eight thousand. The average child at six years of age has something over six hundre 1 words. The vocabulary should increase regularly and rapidly even at mature age, not for the purpose of acquiring big words to use on occasions, but for the pur- pose of using exact words on particular occasions. Mr. Thomas places great stress on sentence structure. Children advance more rapidly if their parents use the best connectives, putting subordinate ideas in subor- dinate tertns. The greatest trouble in oral composition is the frequent use of the conjunction and ' Ihis can be remedied by omitting it in some cases, and by using subordinating connectives in other cases. Again, Mr. ' I ' homas staled that a high plane of thinking brings the language expression to a high plane, also. The second speaker of the afternoon was Mrs. Wallace C. Boyden of Newtonville. Mrs. Hoyden is a mother who has paid a gre;it deal of attention to the education of her children and is therefore well qualified to speak upon the second topic, Problems of the Parent . She said that we must begin early upon the inent;d training of a child and must keep at it. She compared a child ' s mind to a garden. Something must grow in it, and if the best seeds are not planted, ugly weeds will grow there. A child ' s mind should first be influenced by poetry. The study of poetry leaves culture, images and precious thoughts. The reading of poetry should be encouraged, first, because it is the smoothest form of literature; second, it is an invaluable aid to the use of good Knglish ; third, it is a stimulus for the imagination ; and fourth, it appeals to the spiritual nature. Mrs lioyden gave a list of fifty prose works suitable for children to read. She especially emphasized ' Pilgrim ' s Progress and the Bible Stoiies. Children must be read aloud to, says Mrs. Boyden, and story-telling goes hand in hand with reading aloud. Lastly, Professor Win. Allan Neilson, professor of English at Harvard College, discussed the question, What shall our Children Read? He changed the sub- ject somewhat and spoke especially on What our Chil- dren shall not Read. P ' irst, said Professor Neilson, The child must not read the colored supple- ment of the Sunday paper. The jokes are very poor and degrnde the mind. Seccmdly, the child must not read books with constant shocks and surprises. These books deaden his sense of appreciation. What a child reads should be wliat we want him to imitate. He should read for the building of ideals, for the appreciation of sound. for the filling the mind with recollections, and for the gaining of material for imagination. This is the first time that an Knglish conference has been held in connection with a Woman ' s Club; so much interest was shown in the meeting that Mr. Thurber, chairman of the committee, recommended at the regular March meeting of the New England Association of Teachers of P nglisli that an attempt be made to hold such meetings in other parts of New England. Hii.DUR L. Carlson, ' i. Milton ' s Use of Words 1 THINK a good definition for a poet would be: — an artist who uses words instead of paints in the making of his pictures. If this i true, a poet ' s words must be his most important stock in trade. He must choose the proper word for the meter ; he must choose the most pictui ' esque word ; and it must l)e a woid that will make his line musical. In Milton ' s L ' Allegro and II Penseroso , the words have been chosen with such c-ire and discrimina- tion that their study is extremely interesting Picturesque words are found in these two poems in great numbers. Words that add color and beauty to the picture the poet is placing before his readers are found in every line. In L ' Allegro all is bright, shin- ing and JDyous. This is well shown by the following lines : — Sometiinc walkiiiu ' , not nnscon, Hy liedsjerow ehns, on liiilocks mrecn, Rislit ajfahist tlie eastern aie Wiiere the great sun bcijins lii i state liohed in dames find anilier linlit, Tlie clouds ill thousand liveries dijilit. II Penseroso gives the idea of the gray, shadowy light, more suited to study and meditation : — And when the sun begins to tliiisi ' Mis flainiiig Ix ' ains, nio. Goddess l)riiij; To arclu ' d walks of Iwiliiilit rov(!s, And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves. These two (luotalion-; show how important the words expressing color are to the beauty of the poem. On account of Milton ' s love of harmony, musical words are also very frecjuent. In L ' Allegro the liird of happiness is the laik that sings his glad s(nig in the morning. The liird that sings his sweet, sad song in II Penseroso is the nightingale. Another very strik- ing idea in the latter poem shows how bi-autifully the sound of the words may suggest the sense which they convey : — I hear the far-ott ' curfew sound Over some wide- watered sliore, Rwiiiiiiiii; slow with sullen roar.