Page Two.
THE SALEMITE
Saturday, February 13, 1932.
The Salemite
Member Southern Inter-Collegiate
Press Association
Published Weekly by the Student
Body of Salem College
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EDITORIAL STAFF
Editor-in-chief
Sarah Graves
Managing Editor ..
Mary Louise Mickey
As.mciate Editor ....
.... Margaret Johnson
Associate Editor ....
Dorothy Heidenreich
Feature Editor
Beatrice Hyde
Feature Editor
Susan Calder
Feature Editor
Elinor Phillips
Foetrg Editor
Martha H. Davis
Ass't Poetry Editor
I.sabella Hanson
Music Editor
. Mary Absher
Soeietij Editor
Josephine Courtney
Sports Editor
Mary Ollie Biles
Local Editor
Mildred Wolfe
Intercollegiate Edit,
or Miriam Stevenson
REPORTERS
Pliyllis Noe
Elizabeth Gray
Martha Bhuler
Margaret Long
Mary Miller
Zina Vologodsky
CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB
Kathleen Atkins
Mary Drew Dalton
Mary Penn
Carrie Braxton
I have already heard two girls say
that when they graduate from Salem
they want to teach at Lees McRae.
Would it not be wonderful, and
why could not Salem raise at least
one $50 scholarship for Lees McRae ?
Everyone agreed that the 1932
Salem Day was the best ever! The
old Salem Spirit was joyously exuded
■—from the Seniors’ lusty singing in
chapel to the refreshments at the con
clusion of the Alumnae meeting.
Happy Valentine Day! May you
get a frilly one from your “best
beau,” a sweet “daughterly” one from
your mother, a “doggy” one from
your little brother, and a comic one
from your dearest enemy. (Me, too).
New dainties have already been
added to the menus since the good
suggestions in the open criticism box.
Hoorah! i
GROW UP
At the High School stage it was all
very well to call classical music the
“bunk,” and spend money for a con
cert on “Flesh and the Devil,” Doug
las Fairbanks and Rudolph Valen
tino, with chewing gum counted in,
because we might have been dabbed
“sissy” by some unkind soul. But the
college-woman has better under-hand
cuts and more pointed finger nails for
attacking such onslaughts and she
does (speaking very generally) what
she wants to when she wants to. The
only difficulty, however, is that she is
pi one to spend the allowance on Clark
Gable instead of Rudy, and that de
liciously flavored Karmel Korn is apt
to take the place of the wornout chew
ing gum. Then those rides to David-
scn aren’t g.lwaj’s waitilig on the
street corner, and bus fare digs great
holes, not to speak of Mrs. Potter’s
berth rates.
We aren’t old fogies, we take our
fun with the best of them, and we’ll
have yarns to tell our children that
aie just as long as our next door
neighbor’s, but we don’t want to sat-
uatee ourselves with too many movie
heroes, ruin our eye-sight from too
many seats “upstairs,” and pester our
indigestion with daily mixings of hot
dogs and chocolate sundaes.
While we’re in our training period,
besides letting our heads be cold stor
age for knowledge, we want to broad
en out and grow, not merely have les
sons learned, but apply and make use
of them by making the most of ad
vantages that we have. We all have
as our goal a charming, poised, cul
tured lady that we should some day be
proud to call ourselves, and we
shouldn’t cramp the self-to-be now.
Attending well known lectures
has much more spice and gives many
more pointers than any wise crack
through a vitaphone, and listening to
a concert causes more day dreams
than any stack of Guy Lombardo rec
ords. We all know we’re slighting
ourselves when we don’t see and hear
all that we can, but sometimes we get
clogged up, forget, or become so plain
lazy we don’t care. Sloth has a wicked
gleam in his eye in spite of that droop
ing eye-lid, and No-Care has an ugly
disposition that gives mouths a cynic’s
curve. Let’s get intellectual, up-to-
date, and find all that’s coming to
us—Grow Up before its too late to
grow I
EXTRACTS FROM
“MOURNING BECOMES
ELECTRA”
{By O’Neill)
“It was seeing death all the time
in this war got me to thinking these
things. Death was so common, it
didn’t mean anything. That freed me
to think of life. Queer, isn’t it?
Death made me think of life. Before
that life had only made me think of
death! . . . That’s always been
the Mannon’s way of thinking. They
went to the white meeting-house on
Sabbath and meditated on death.
Life was a dying. Being born was
starting to die. Death was being
born. How in hell people ever get
such notions! That white meeting-
liouse. It stuck in my mind—clean-
scrubbed and white-washed—a temple
of death! But in this war I’ve seen
too many white walls splattered with
blood that counted no more than
dirty water. I’ve seen dead men
scattered about, no more important
than rubbish to be got rid of. That
made the white meeting-house seem
meaningless—making so much solemn
fuss over death!”
“I thought about my life—lying
awake nights—and about 5Wir life.
In the middle of battle I’d think
maybe in a minute I’d be dead. But
my life as just me ending, that didn’t
appear worth a thought one way or
another. But listen, me as your
husband being killed, that seemed
queer and wrong—like something dy
ing that had never lived. Then all
the years we’ve been man and wife
would rise up in my mind and I
would try to look at them. But
nothing was clear except that there’d
always been some barrier between us
—a wall hiding us from each other!
I would try to make up my mind ex
actly what that way was but I never
could discover. Do you know?”
“ IP 0 IE
SHADOW
Even the beauty of the rose doth
When its bright, ferrid noon is past,
A still and lengthening shadow in the
dust.
Till darkness come
And take its strange dream home.
The transient bubbles of the water
paint
’Neath their frail arch a shadow
The golden nimbus of the windowed
Till shine the stars.
Casts pale and trembling bars.
The loveliest thing earth hath, a
shadow hath,
A dark and livelong hint of death.
Haunting it even till its last faint
Who, then, may tell
The beauty of heaven’s shadowless
asphodel?
—Walter De La More.
THUNDERSTORMS
My mind has thunderstorms,
That brood for heavy hours:
Until they rain me words;
My thoughts are drooping flowers
And sulking, silent birds.
Yet come, dark thunderstorms,
And brood your heavy hours;
For when you rain me words.
My thoughts are dancing flowers
And joyful singing birds.
—PFiUia?n H. Davies.
RECIPROCITY
I do not think that skies and mead-
Moral, or that the fixture of a star
Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees
Have wisdom in their windless
silences.
Yet these are things invested in my
With constancy, and peace, and for
titude,
That in my troubled season I can cry
Upon the wide composure of the sky,
And envy fields, and wish that I
might be
As little daunted as a star or tree.
—John Drinkwater.
if 1C y - i
REALITY
It is strange how we travel the wide
world over.
And see great churches and foreign
streets.
And armies afoot and kings of won
der.
And deeds a-doing to fill the sheets
That grave historians will pen
To ferment the brains of simple men.
And all the time the heart remem
bers
That quiet habit of one far place,
The drawings and books, the turn of
a passage.
The glance of a dear familiar face.
And there is the true cosmopolis.
While the thronging world a phan-
■—John Drinkwater.
THE CRYSTAL GAZER
I shall gather myself into myself
again,
I shall take my scattered selves and
make them one,
I shall fuse them into a polished crys
tal ball
Where I can see the moon and the
flashing sun.
I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after
hour intent.
Watching the future come and
the present go—
And the little shifting pictures of peo
ple rushing
In tiny self-importance to and fro.
—Sara Teasdale.
“Isn’t it strange that princes and
And clowns that caper in sawdust
rings
And common folk like you and me
Are builders for eternity?
Each is given a bag of tools
A shapeless mass and a book of rules
And each must fashion ere life be
flown
A stumbling block or a stepping stone.”
“The dead! Why can't the dead
die!”
“I love you now with all the guilt
in me—the guilt we share! Perhaps
I love you too much, Vinnie!”
—Eugene O’Neill.
DAN CUPID SPEAKS
(This is station L-O-V-E, Dan
Cupid speaking, February 14, 1932.)
“Are you asleep, Phyllis? Lean
closer and listen to me, for once more
with bow and arrow I sue the sport
wliich this fair season gives since I
last spoke to you. Father Time has
again reached out his wrinkled hands
and taken unto himself the worn and
battered days of another year, and I
am still in love with you. Don’t go
away, the static won’t last much
loniger; it is only the pearly shavings
that are falling as I sharpen my ar
row. They have been falling all year,
Phyllis. Surfc-ly you havei noticed
them. They have given the glistening
to the dew and the sparkle to the rain
drops. This has been a year’s work,
that flying from my crystal bow, my
arrow shall not pierce too sharply.
That work is almost over, and the day
has come when, entrusting my bow
to Mercury, and sitting very lightly
on the arrow, I shall be hurled into
the air to seek you.
Scorn me not, fairest maid. For
you I have saved all things which are
beautiful one smile for me, and you
shall become the Queen of Love what
do you say? You shall have a wedd
ing gown of the sheerest silk from
cocoons, lady slippers for your dainty
feet, a ring with a tear for its setting,
a crown of violets for your hair, a
comfort of sunbeams for your bed, and
tiger lilies to guard you while you
sleep. You can walk on rose petals,
and butterflies will announce your
coming. Would you like it ?
“Please, dear, we’ll teach all the
world that love is beautiful. Then
we can uproot my garden plot which
is overcrowded with bleeding hearts.
By the way, did you know that my
heart is there? It grows pale as the
days pass, and yet it is doomed to live
on account of the intensity of its love.
Of course, you couldn’t know what
that love means to me, but I am going
to tell you right now.
“Love is the stringing of pearly
tears on two heart chords made one
by entwining; love is tugging the
pistil so that when it touches the blue
■carolla, the clear tones of the canter
bury bell ring out in the open sky;
love is tuning the harps of angels and
mixing the shades for rainbows. Love
is directing the clouds—riding the
fluffy, white ones, and tempering the
anger of the black ones. You have
to duck your head sometimes, so that
it will not be stained blue.
“We’ll brush the stardust from the
milky way, and swing from the peaks
of the stars, and, if you like, we’ll
climb the brim and drink from the
big dipper.
“Yes, there is one thing you must
do—help me push the world so it will
keep going in the right direction. No,
you won’t mind it, and you’re not
dreaming, either. Wake up, Phyllis,
I’m really here—Be my Valentine.
MORNING
The air is as still as new fallen snow.
Tile stars have gone one by one long
ago.
The blue of the mountains rises
above the green.
In the East the sky flushes like the
bride-to-be.
Above, soft clouds, like fairyland
boats,
I Glide into the pink of the dawn,
j From the boughs of a poplar is heard
The faintest breath of the song of a
bird.
The fragrance of a dew-covered rose
Greets the laborour as to his work he
goes.
A breeze begins to tousle and tear
The ringlets of a child’s golden hair.
—Kathleen Adkins.
Week-End Travels
In the Realms of Gold
Have you ever rumbled along in a crude wooden cart through
the great forests of Worth and Saint Leonard’s? Have you driven
by Rickmans Green and Pease Pottage to Copthorne on the Surry?
If so you have probably heard of the Colgate Brethren and of Susan
Spray, the child preacher, who claimed that she had seen the Lord.
In reality she was scared of a thunder storm and wanted sympathy
and protection. Anyone who starts the book, Susan Spray, will
eagerly follow this child-preacher through her pathetic baby hood, her
stay at the poorhouse, her adventures as house servant, farm laborer,
and minister, and her three marriages. Thus, in our week-end
travels we cover miles from Beggar’s Bush, Horsham, and Pickdick
to Liverpool and at last to London.
From England and her up-to-date civilization, let’s turn our
steps eastward. Today Russia is on the lips and in the hearts of men.
Though we have complete translations of her literary masterpieces
and have looked upon her art, we do not yet understand Russia. The
poetry of Lermontov provides a key to open that locked door. His
lyrics and ballads are dramatized moments from the life and emo
tions of the Russian people. Who would not like to know more
about the man who wrote,
“I love to ride along the road of nights
And slowly piercing with my gaze the shadows,
To meet aleng my way the mournful lights
Of trembling village fires among the meadows”?
In editing the book. Representative British Dramas, the author’s
purpose was to select those plays which would emphasize definite
characteristics of the British drama of the nineteenth century. To
those interested in history “Richelieu” will be delightful. The build
ing of the French Monarchy is depicted by features alike tragic and
comic—a weak king, an ambitious favorite, as well as the conflict of
church and state. To provide comedy and wit “The Cassilis Engage
ment” and “Our Brothers” are included. As tragedy, “Virginius,”
awakes enthusiasm by the' frank humanity of its subject. The person
who fails to read this book will not realize his loss.
Susan Spray Shelia Kaye-Smith
A Sheaf from Lermontov J. J. Robbins
Representative British Dramas Montrose J. Moses
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Manager .. Mary Alice Beam
Advertising Mar Edith Claire Leake
Asst. Ad‘v. M^r. Ruth McLeod
Asst. Adv. Mgr Grace Pollock
Asst. Adv. Mgr Mary Sample
Asst. Adv. Mgr Isabelle Pollock
Asst. Adv. Mgr Emily Mickey
Asst. Ad. Mgr. Mary Catlierlne Siewers
Circulation Mgr Sarah Horton
Asst. Circ. Mgr Ann Sliuford
Asst. Circ. Mgr. Elizabeth Donald
LITTLE THOUGHTS
FOR TODAY
“The efflux of the soul is Hap
piness, here is Happiness,
I think it pervades the open air,
waiting at all times.”
—PFalt IVhitman.
“I am an acme of things ac
complished, and I am an encloser
of things to be.”
—Walt Whitman.
“Death makes women a dream,
and men a traveller’s story,
Death drives the lonely soul to
wander under the sky.”
—John Masefield.
“How nice it is to eat!
All creatures love it so.
That they who first did spread,
Ere breaking bread,
A cloth like level snow.
Were right, I know.”
—F. Sturge Moore. _
PARAGRAPHICS