Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/53

 UMPQUA ACADEMY 43 brought the thing to a close in this way and it was a long time before our ruse was discovered. Card playing, dancing, drinking and swearing were all strictly prohibited. The moment one of those old professors saw a playing card his bristles would rise, figuratively speaking, for he imagined he could see therein the leering countenance of Old Nick, staring him in the face. But from my advent on, the boys and girls, maybe I should 1 say young men and women, communed with each other with less restraint than of yore, still they were sufficiently hampered to cause much chaf- fing and some resentment among the young people, and divers ways and means were invented and employed to effect the evasion of the more rigid rules without detection. Marconi is considered the inventor of wireless telegraphy, but our first mother, Eve, understood and put in operation the same when our race and time were new, and her worthy daughters have continued 1 adepts in the same right along down the line. A young woman who is not able to convey her feelings, without words and without writing, but in a subtle language that any young man of common sense can readily understand if directed to him, is fit only to become and remain an inmate of some institution for defectives. So with all the rules and all the vigilance the young men and women found ways of discover- ing their feelings for and to each other "in tricks that were dark and ways that were vain" to their respected professors. A smile or gesture, all meaningless to any except the one for whom intended, and the hurried 1 warm pressure of the hand as the pupils passed from one class and class room to another, could not be successfully forestalled, and conveyed more mean- ing than the stern professor could crowd into whole volumes of theses. And I dare say these little blessings and blessed moments are still fresh, like oases of the desert, in the minds and the hearts of the now aged men and women who were stu- dtents in old Umpqua Academy. Cupid was busy there as ever he is where healthy young men and women congregate, shooting his arrows, rather aim- lessly perhaps, just practicing, so to speak; but he finally went