Walton High School - Periwinkle Yearbook (Bronx, NY)

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43? H. -I wx , 9 Q .I 6 1 I 2944 tif landmarks along the road, the Hvalue received of our school careerl Novv the time has come for the working out of our promise to payll' The world vvill at once commence to look for us to pay back into its treasury the vvealth of good things it has for so long been bestovving upon us. lt vvill demand our noblest revelations of character, our highest demonstration of every latent possibility of attainment, our truest, tenderest attention to the needs of every brother and sister, our most faithful, self-sacrificing service. It vvill remind us, at every turn of the road, of that note always stand- ing in our name with its never failing, For value received, I promise to pay. lt vvill never once let us forget the cost of life-the constant expense that must be met-the unfailing price that must be paid for every gift-not in dollars and cents, but in service, in faithfulness to duty, in the uplift of our neighbors-yes, some- times, perhaps, in unavailing pain, and heartache, and tears. ROSE SOBEL

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thing in the world has its Price, and we cannot gain one advance- ment nor advantage without, sometime or another, being called upon to pay every ounce of its value, As Lowell says: Earth asks its price for what earth gives us, For a cap and bells our lives we pay, ' Bubbles we win with a whole soul's tasking' l-low often we see men and women paying for their early mis- takes, however ignorantly committed, by years of remorse and bitter expiation, paying for hours of dissipation and crime by physical and mental suffering that is very hard to bear, as well as by the scorn and condemnation of their fellow-creatures, and, worse than all else, the death of their own self-respect, paying for their indolence, shiftlessness, extravagance and waste, by poverty and want, paying for their disregard of the laws of health and right living by disease and invalidismg or, on the other hand, enjoying the reward they have earned by industry, economy and a firm adherence to the right, with its due regard for the rights and feelings of others, in a succession of happy, prosperous years, in the respect and esteem of their fellow beings! Thus is our life to be what we make itl Thus do we see the ultimate justice of the Colden Rule that bids us, Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them, Thus do we feel a debt of gratitude to those who have given us so fair a start, until we remember that the Law of Compensation is a pair of scales that is never out of balance, and that their reward was theirs, even in the doing of the deed they felt their duty. What a big thought it is that from this time on we have the shaping of our destinies in our own hands. All these years of our student life we have been on the receiving hand, Life has been showering upon us its best gifts. While it is true that we have justly earned a certain portion of all that we have attained, there is a great deal of that subtle inner development, that gradual day- by-day character building, that almost invisible growth and expan- sion of the dormant woman within us, for which we are indebted to all the influences, both seen and unseen, that have been brought to bear upon us through all these years. We stand at the very gateway of life's activities, prepared by all these years of careful, painstaking instruction, and watchful, ever-vigilant guidance, for the struggle with that real, vital existence that awaits us on the other side. As we look back, how easy it is to estimate, by the Q O 6 1 l'Q I 5 0

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IEQCIUTLI We are all made in different ways and that is why my defini- tion of beauty would never do for you. l-lowever, on one thing we are all agreed. Beauty is an indefinable quality which gives us pleasure, and pleasure is an indefinable quality which we may term completeness. To each of us, beauty makes a different approach, and sometimes, when she is in a graceful humor, she will favor some of us by permitting us to make with our hearts or brains some mirror in which she is reflected. Those lucky ones who have caught beauty in one of those moods have never been for- gotten, although some of them lived centuries and centuries ago. Their names have become synonyms for all the qualities beauty bears-grace, charm, color, truth, and so on to infinity, The two most powerful of all mirrors have proved themselves to be Literature and Art. With the medium of words or paints, human hands have caught and kept the rarety of rareties, lvlany poets have allowed beauty to seep through their poems without actually mentioning her, but she was unmistakably there, nevertheless. Shelley is delicacy, Burns is humanity, Lanier is music, and Shakespeare is life, These men have found their counterparts in the prose masters of the world, Barrie is delicacy, Dickens is humanity, the Bible is music, and all three are life. The paint-brush, however, has provided a medium of the ages, a happy means to a lovely end, and has given the world such names as Da Vinci, Titian, Raphael, Rubens and Corregio. These men possessed that sense of beauty, which, leading from their souls straight to their finger- tips, came to immortal life on canvas. Leonardo Da Vinci breathed life into his creations, a veritable Pygmalion. Titian dealt in color, glorious, vivid harmony and warm vital subjects. Raphael's work exuded exquisite perfection, his flawless canvases so regal that they seemed hardly human. Corregio fused his work with light, while Rubens, a master of the brush, built superb decorations and freizes. We shall never know what feelings prompted these men to set up their easels hastily, feeling an indescribable urge, a warm palpable feeling, and an eager heart that prompted their creations. We can only say when architects, artists, poets, weavers, com- posers, and musicians have done with their work: A thing of beauty is a joy forever. PEARL WEXLER Q it 6 I I'Q I S l