Waukesha High School - Megaphone Yearbook (Waukesha, WI)

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G. A. A. BOARD Third Row, left to right-Drake, Miss Dodge. Fisher. Second Row -Christison, XVakeman, lvens, Miss Vklorthington. Sherman, Fryar. First Row-Vetto, Burtch. Rutte, Roberts. should have become the general one in America is merely an interesting example of the difliculty amongst us of disentangling one's individual self from the glutinous mass of all one's compatriots. X To practise an art of living, it is essential to arrive at some standard of values for ourselves, If we may judge from this contest, and from other evidences, the standard of value arrived at by the American people in the broad sphere of ethics or morality is merely the standard of what the overwhelming mass of Ameri- cans of all sorts consider applicable to themselves. There can be no individuality in conforming to such a standard so arrived at. Moreover, such a standard is bound to be beastly low. The mass of men has never risen without individuals to make it rise any more than a mass of dough will rise without the tiny bit of yeast in it. Uur concern here, however. is with the individual who would manage his life with art. not with the mass, and for him no art of life is possible if he is merely going to make his life conform to the opinions of the majority. It is as absurd as it would be to think of Keats, preparing to write an Ode to a Nightingale, taking a vote of all his fellow apothecary apprentices as to what they thought he ought to say about a nightingale. But we have also got to consider carefully what tools to use in our art. Limiting ourselves for the moment to what are usually called things, it is obvious, though generally overlooked, that the effect upon ourselves of things is both varied and profound. This is a theme which is rarely treated, but the reader will recall the effect upon Lee Randon of the French doll on his mantel- piece in I-Iergesheimer's HCytherea. It is, perhaps, the best illustration I can offer of the idea worked out to its conclusion in all completeness. The other day I happened to be visiting the exhibition of the Arts Decoratifs at the Grand Palais in Paris. The new art in France, and elsewhere over here in Europe, is producing a wholly new form of interior decoration and furnishing, sometimes of great beauty and nearly always of much interest. As I stood in one bedroom in which Page One Hundred Twenty-one

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if 'WV' GIRLS ourth Row. left to right-liishsr. l.. J. Birch. Fuchs, Granicher, Nl. Knoebel. XVakeman. Third Row-Emling. Hardtl-tc. Magnusson, Sherman, Drake, XVilliams. Second Row-Garrow. E. Zillmcr. Keppcn. E. Assman. Roch. Christison. Lfipslce. First Row-Marion hflclxlaught. Vctto. Bower. Martha McNaught, D, Storclx. Preston, Goldsmith. I. The Art of Living Selections from the last chapter of Our Business Civilization, by James Truslow Adams, Printed by special permission of the author and of the publishers, Messrs. Charles and Albert Boni. Many people seem to believe that the life of the savage is one of delightful independence, of doing what suits himself all day long. No idea could be further from the truth. The savage is hemmed and circumscribed at almost every point in his personal life by the mores of his tribe. Liberty, freedom of speech and action. the right and opportunity for free self-expression, are among the highest products of civilization. not of savagery, and the belief that the reverse is the case is merely an example of the present day tendency to exalt the ideal of savagery and to return on our tracks, evident in all the arts. Democracy, a certain weariness of the complexities of that very process of civilization that has made freedom possible, and the misunderstood teachings of scientific research, all three are tending to make the tyranny of the crowd greater and an art of life more difficult. ln a recent American prize contest for defini- tions of morality, for example, one of the three which won prizes was as follows: Morality is that form of human behavior conceded to be virtuous by the conven- tions ofthe group to which the individual belongs, and we are told that among all the definitions submitted there was little disagreement as to the general concept. Of course this is the muddiest sort of thinking. The particular social forms which morality takes among the crowd at any given time is confused with morality itself, and, if the definition were true, any advance in moral concepts on the part of either society or the individual would become impossible, as no society ever changed its moral opinions unanimously overnight. That such a definition Page One Hundred Twenty

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the bed of ivory and ebony of indescribable design had its covering of leopard skins, Icould not help musing on . mf' -1, fi - ,I 8 ' 1 K 5 V what subtle differences ' -sri, yi iff: f in one's spiritual and ' g -5 g A intellectual character if 9 . fig I . . Q A H-V! 54 va-1 3' , 'Q would come from living . f' ' .. wg NJ-If il ' , ' 1 .A ' 4. . :Nc ones life amid sucn I . I gl , I furnishings. as con- . if v - Q - A trasted. we will say. X 1 li N ' ' . Ji with bedrooms of com- 21, Y - A . g v plete and perfect Queen . -, - ' Anne or Louis Qua- torze. ln the room l mention. the atmosphere, due to the furnishings, was an almost maleficent blend- ing of the perfection of twentieth century civilization with the savagery of the jungle. As one stood there, in a room designed as the last word in French art and craftsmanship for a millionaire of 1929, one was aware in part of one's soul of the faint booming of tom-toms and of the odor of black and sweaty jungle Hesh. A man could not live in that room without strange things happening in the depths of his being. GIRLS' FIELD HOCKEY This. perhaps, may be said to be an extreme example, as was Hergesheimer's, but is it? Do not all our surroundings and things affect us? The social effects of such things as automobiles, radios, and so on have now become commonplaces, but what of the effects on the individual? In many ways a man or woman with a motor car is a diH'erent creature from one without one. Think how many lives have been altered by the reading of a single book. The laboring man who lives in a Sixth Avenue room in New York facing on the elevated railroad is a different man from one who lives in a cottage and garden in Devon or amid quiet and roses in the Vaucluse. All this would seem to be so self-evident as to call for no elaboration, and yet do we pay any attention to it? XVhen we try to live as everyone else does, when we buy something because Ueverybody has one, are we not using our tools with an utter lack of discrimina- tion? There is a similar decadence in some directions in the arts other than that of life, a tendency to put any old thing on canvas, to clutter up a novel with irrelevant details on the plea of realism. We might as well try to eat everything as have everything, regardless of our own taste or the idiosyncrasies of our own digestions. A painter does not use his scarlet or blue or orange brushes regard- less of the effect, merely because they are there He selects his colors as he does his objects, for their final inffuence on his work, or he merely produces a daub. Page One Hundred Twenty-two