Walton High School - Periwinkle Yearbook (Bronx, NY)

Page 21 text:

HAIKU THE HOME COMING Scrunching footsteps as Snow falls gently--orange patch Of light-warm scents--home! EXCELSIOR Wind and rain battle. I laugh as I fight the stormw- What matter defeat! MARIORIE SMITH A silken silver WINTER Icicle clung to a bough Destitute of leaf. AUTUMN Flaming red and gold In a whirlwind swished above. Oh that I had wings! CECELIA ADELMAN

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Life on the river in those days was drama interspersed with comedy, unfolding day by day. The steamboat races, the impatiently-awaited, gay show-boat, the mellow chants of the negro slaves and boatmen, gaudy Mardi Gras time in New Orleans, the bluff, good-natured river- men, all added to the picturesque majesty of the broad, rolling Missis- sippi. After the war, Mark Twain left the river to wander the world over and found occupation as a silver miner in Nevada, a gold miner in Cali- fornia, a ' reporter in San Francisco, special correspondent in the Sandwich lslands, a roving correspondent in Europe and the East, a lec- turer, and finally, to use his own inimitable words, a scribblerf' These many fields of literary work kept him busy for many years, during which he often thought of and longed for the constant companion of his youth, the friendly, magnanimous Mississippi. lt was after wandering about for more than twenty years that he at last' succumbed to the subtle yearning to visit the environment of his boyhood. Disregarding the new civilization, cities, and boats, Mark Twain felt rather than saw the changes along his beloved river. We need not dwell upon those changes which had then taken place, and which today are even more marked. We have all read about or visited the river as it is today, we see, rather than feel, the changes by com- parison with what we have read of the river's past. Mark Twain, in these few words, describes the change more vividly, more adequately than we ever could: But the change of changes was on the levee. l-lalf ta idozen sound-asleep steamboats where l used to see a solid mile of wide-awake ones! This was melancholy, this was woeful. l-lalf a dozen lifeless steamboats, a mile of empty wharves, a negro, fatigued with whisky, stretched asleep in a wide and soundless vacancy, where the serried hosts of commerce used to contend! Here was desolation indeed! Mark Twain has been gone these twenty-five years. But a man who has created such famous characters as I-luck Finn and Tom Sawyer can never wholly die, for the vital part of him, his spirit, lingers after him. There is a bond between him and his beloved Mississippi, just as the river flows on in its bed of centuries, so, too, does Mark Twain flive on in our hearts and memories, Q FRANCES MURPHY

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U I'lpPQpClPQCI O Thirty-nine pairs of widened, curiosity-drenched eyes swung around in perfect unison as the surprised accents of Miss Rawlinson's voice whipped through the tense silence of History class 6l l. Faces-there were all kinds of faces-fat and thin, short and long, square, round, and oval-all usually masked with the placid, high-school girl expression--but now, all were wrinkled into the same startled grimace of overwhelming surprise-a surprise that was amply justified, for there at her customary seat in the first row, straight and ,slim and defiant, stood Margy Piccarro, erstwhile favorite pupil, but now, as it seemed, number 3, page 2, in Miss Rawlinson's little black book that nestled among the white papers and cards in the upper right-hand drawer of her square, dull-brown desk. Why-Mar-ga-ret Pic-carrol Unprepared? Mar-ga-ret Piccarro! The half-wondering, half-reproachful voice rose higher and higher in a gradual emphasis. Upon the cool evening air still lingered the passionate strains of Franz l.iszt's immortal Gypsy Rhapsody. She had played it with all her heart, upon the delicate, still quivering strings of her violin. Silence-, a sigh, and then everybody began to talk at once. The walls of the famed old Conservatory building literally trembled with the excitement of the audience. Which of the four aspirants was to win the scholarship? Was it the short, rosy-faced little boy who offered the Caprice Espagnolew? Was it the thin lad who rendered the Liebestraum so exquisitely? Was it the nervous boy whose E string had snapped in the middle of the Cantata ? Or was it the' slim, brunette girl who had, just a moment ago, finished the Hungarian Rhapsody ? Margaret tried to choke back the rising lump in her throat, suc- ceeded in mopping up a few of the smarting tears on her pale cheeks, and then disconsolately sat on the box and kept staring intently at the third black light switch back-stage, with her knees drawn up under her and her chin resting in two moist, cupped palms. As hard as she could, Margie tried to keep back the vivid memory of those terrifying thoughts flashing through her mind in the brief four minutes on the stage. But it was impossible. Again, in thought, she stumbled up the four, grey-marble steps to