Worcester Polytechnic Institute - Peddler Yearbook (Worcester, MA)

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The Log 17 analysis of this genius. In the paragraphic style affected by the writer of the Wanamaker advertisements, the Junior Class embraces Football players, Baseball tossers. Amateur photographers. Mashers, Chauvenet solvers. Farmers, Cranks. The football men are invincible, the mashers are irresistible, the Chauvenet solvers are too shy and retiring for anything, and the A few plain famiei ' S have an air of rusticity about them which is simply unsurpassable. The cranks are small in number, but very select. The class is also subdivided into Chemists, Civil Engineers and Mechanical Engineers. Each variety can be easily detected. The A pointer for Chemists liave stains on their fingers, the Civils have detectives. mud on their shoes, and the Mechanical Engineers have small sections of the grindstone concealed in their clothes. We will now leave off analyzing and write a little history. It was in the spring of ’87 that the class began its history-making A bit of ancient Career. At that time it composed itself into a ball-nine history. convenient form made more history than all the other organizations of the school combined. Nobody doubted the strength of this nine. It was as strong as Limburger cheese. It stood alone for some time, the other class nines being unwilling to try issues with it. Finally it claimed the championship of the school, and soon after defeated the Highland Military aggregation of paid professionals, in two successive contests. Flushed with these victories, the manager of the team quickly arranged for a game with our friends of the Worcester Academy. Here the historian sheds bitter tears. Confident of success and wishing to try some new material which promised well, the captain laid aside his true and tried men and experimented with the Paxton battery and the West Brookfield infield. It was a rash experiment and the score was 18 to I.

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i6 The Log. NINETY. “Young, aggressive, rapidly growing, always interesting.” “-Tout enfant encor, des Seniors recueillis L’ecoutaient, racontant d’une bouche ravie Les jours si peu nombreux et deja si remplis.” I , ' Class of Ninety, W. P. I., is a bashful little thing. It shrinks from publicity. When its eyes fall on the two poetic sentiments delineated above, it blushes. From the time when it was asked to tell all it knew on a few subjects connected with the entrance examinations, it has ever been averse to proclaiming its own virtues. With characteristic modesty, therefore, its representative enters upon this duty of emblazonry. This opening paragraph is not funny—it is solid fact. Let us now penetrate further into this mystery and see wherein lies the remarkable genius at which the poet darkly hints. Strange and incomprehensible A mystery ex- as it may seeiii, it lies in each individual member plained. class. Aiid it does not lie passively there. It lies with all the fervency and ardor expressed in the fiction inseparably linked with G. Washington and cherry- trees. Repress a smile here, gentle reader, and note the following

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i8 The Log. But the muse of history is fairly wreathed in smiles as she turns to the football record. Here she finds the words “ High A paean of School,” and beneath them a score which starts from victory. 2ero and increases variably to infinity or thereabouts. She also finds the word “ Academy ” without any score attached. But a dicky-bird tells her that the ground was hard and cold on that day and that Principal Abercrombie was afraid of his boys’ anatomies. Now let us change the scenery and talk about scholarship and kindred subjects. We dislike to do this, especially as the dicky- A treatise on mentioned above suggests “ Ravvy, don’t talk scholarship. sliop,” but this is oui ' first offeiice and, besides, our name is not “ Ravvy.” There are many prodigies of learning in the class. They will certainly make themselves prominent in after life. Some of these prodigies lisped in chemical symbols and were daily accustomed to absent themselves from the fostering care of their nurse-girls for the purpose of viewing, not the circus or the vulgar hand-organ, but the latest scientific application of electricity, or a public exhibition of the Mashem Automatic Coupler. At a very tender age one of the Chemists is said to have evolved the following composition, which must close this short treatise on scholarship : “ Once there was a family named Pickle, consisting of Mr. Pickle, Mrs. Pickle, the two little Pickles and Miss-Pickle. One morning at the supper table, when they were all eating pickles, e.xcept Mr. Pickle, who was Ntne y ' hemist locking in the jar for pieces of copper, symbol Cu, a cab rapidly drew up to the palatial mansion of the Pickles’, the front door was rapidly burst open and Mr. Barrel Process, who was a passionate suitor for Miss-Pickle’s hand, rapidly exclaimed : ‘ Fly with me, dearest, to the land where everything is cucumbers and boracic acid !’ But .Miss-Pickle haughtily elevated her Fifth-Avenue nose and remarked : ‘ Depart, villain I 1 will never throw my sulphur way on you.’ Then there was a dull thud and, soon after, Mr, Pickle telephoned for the undertaker.” If ye have tears, and have not already shed them, prepare to shed tliem now. This article would be incomplete without mention Affecting obitu- of those members of the class who have passed ary notice. beyond, where everything is free from weeping and wailing and there is no gnashing of teeth. Some of these left us just