Walton High School - Periwinkle Yearbook (Bronx, NY)

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the brilliantly-lighted stage and walked with quick, hurried steps to the piano. There, with unsteady fingers, she turned the white sheets of the accompaniment, reached page forty-two, and pressed it down. Now she was tuning up, her fingers and wrists feverishly twisting and push- ing, in the effort to move the pegs. As she stood there, left foot resting on the rung of the black piano bench, it seemed as if the white heat of millions of eyes was burning her, scorching her, boring into her, like the intense rays of a heat lamp. Millions of eyes-yet she could not distinguish one pair. And as she walked to the center-front of the platform, they seemed to follow her every movement with a quietness that was unbearable. Then, with a nervous bouncing and skittering of her well-rosined bow and a slightly-quivering fifth finger, she began. As her fingers slipped into the familiar notes of the music, her playing at first, to her at least, became almost mechanical. l-ler mind seemed cooly detached and unemotional and her thoughts wandered. Then little by little the spirit and meaning of the music seeped into her veins and lighted her mind with a sparkling gayety. As she played on and on, her taut muscles relaxed, and then it was that the delighted audience heard and appre- ciated the mastery and control of this fifteen-year old girl student. Sitting there on the dusty box, Margie suddenly looked up to find one of the judges beckoning to her from the stage. As she walked out, she saw, with his fiddle under his arm, the rosy-faced boy standing with a white printed paper in his hand-the paper an exact replica of the one which was then handed to her amid the enthusiastic applause of the audience. And what did it mean, this precious document? She scanned it wonderingly after she had left the stage and had receieved the congratulations and caresses of her parents and friends. A curving smile of joy lit up her face, for she had won' second prize-a three- year scholarship in the Conservatory! t lt was eleven o'clock when, going home, she passed the gleaming jewelry-store clock near the subway entrance. 1 . . Q . n . . n a Why Margie Pic-carrol young Miss Rawlinson exclaimed. Un- prepared? lGravelyl Well, see me at the end of the period. Five minutes after the bell had rung, a penitent but joyful Mar- jorie left Miss Rawlinson's room and hurried through the hall to her next class. Life now seemed such a glorious ringing melody. MARY TADLER

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Mark Twain---ITI umorisl What art thou? The emboldened traveler spoke, And it replied, I am the American joke. loke of a people great, gay, bold, and free I type their masterhood. Mark Twain made me. lExcerpt from the American loke,'l by W. D. I-Iowellsl Because Mark Twain's humor is so characteristically American, it has endeared him forever in the hearts of his countrymen as well as of those abroad. I-Iowever, beneath his wit, which sometimes shows a coarse side and is at other times irreverent and flippant, a thoughtful philosopher, who possesses a keen shrewdness, is revealed. As the Years roll by, Mark Twain, the man, is fast dwindling into a legend whose humor must be valued apart from the author's person- ality and time. Fortunately, there was a certain drawl in his pen which saves much of his humorous work from flatness. Today, we can find little drollery in many of his writings save for the way in which the story is presented. For illustrative purposes we point to the following passage from The Innocents Abroad wherein he describes his emotions one night as a boy when he awoke and found the body of a murdered man in his room: I went away from there. I do not say that I went away in any sort of a hurry, but I simply went--That is sufficient. I went out at the window, and I carried the sash along with me. I 'did not need the sash, but it was handier to take it than it was to leave it, and so I took it. I was not scared, but I was considerably agitated. Always fond of following the counsel of others, he wrote his cele- brated jumping Frog of Calaveras County, employing a maxim of Rudyard KipIing's creation: first get the facts-then distort them as you please. Mark Twain, the droll comedian who was able to make the masses laugh long and heartily, could and did frequently become very deeply depressed and melancholy. Once at a girls' college he attempted to read them a really serious poem that he had written, believing this group to be an appropriate and receptive audience. I ' 3 I . 0