There are a small handful of people at IHS who know about a very small, very pink room at the very end of the E-wing. Although small and unassuming, this room is the deepest one can go into the chronicles of IHS. In that room, there are four average-looking filing cabinets that contain annals of IHS Tattler history, dating back 126 years. Here follows a selection.
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Note: The current Tattler does not necessarily endorse the opinions published in historical Tattlers.
December 1927
THE YEAR
Was there ever such a day?
Winter lays his gentle hand,
Silent, stretching still and white,
Over all the slumbering land,
Fluttering down like Autumn’s ashes,
Covering Summer’s saddened grasses.
Never yet was night like this:
April comes with silver moon,
Lying like a maiden’s kiss
On the stream that far too soon-
It houses now the tragic loon-
Will pave the golden road for June
Day like this could never come
To a world not steeped in June.
In the fields the wild bees hum,
Soft the whispering breezes croon-
Sweet and mellow, gold and rose,
Fair from its dawn until its close.
Saw you ever such a day?
All the world is in a flame,
Gold and russet, scarlet gray-
Nature’s self is clothed again
In a cloak of living fire
For vanished Summer’s funeral pyre.
All the season flitting past,
Each one lovelier than the last!
JOURNEY
I saw the clouds their billows fold
Of melting, sun-bequeathed gold
Around the mountains looming far
Above the plains and meadow-star.
Eager I rose in my desire
To grasp their flaming flowers of fire
Tramped a weary score of miles,
Clambering the rugged files.
But as I neared, the treasures paled,
No lights around the mountain sailed,
Naught but a cold and dampened sod
Marked the spot where beauty trod.
December 1942
Christmas Will Be Different This Year
Christmas will be celebrated a different way this year in American homes! True the traditional evergreen will undoubtedly occupy its usual place in the living room, but the turkey will be a few pounds lighter to enable service men to enjoy it too. There will be fewer elaborate gifts, and war bonds will occupy a prominent place beneath a gaily decorated tree. Holiday festivities midst traditional holly, tinsel and mistletoe will bring forth numerous uniform clad men, granted 24 hour leave from the monotony and tension of army routine. Battle and strife are temporarily forgotten for no one speaks of the fight for freedom existing everywhere on the globe. But as we see the vacant chair at the table we are silent in proud recognition, of a brother fighting at Guadalcanal as Marine, or the neighbor who flies with the RAF. We are remembering darkened homes across the world seeing starving families huddle together against the threat of roaring planes overhead. These saddened families find no escape from this brutal reality for Christmas Eve offers not release. But within us, we are confident, as we hear church bells echo reassuringly through the quiet of the snow clad valley promising an eternal peace, destined to calm a shattered world.
December 1967
A Christmas Message
From outside the warmth of our humble office we hear the icy tinkle of bells and see the bright blinking lights—red, white, blue, and purple and yellow and green and aquamarine—and we know that the happy good-will days of cheer and love for us and our friends are with us once again.
We wish you a merry Christmas and a resolute New Year!
How soothing it must be to stare into a dazzling tree and forget for a day or two the ugly headlines that force visions of carnage and burnt flesh and crawling cockroaches before our squinted eyes. These have no place at a feast. Neither does a guilty conscience. By and by we’ll toast our last toast and pop our last balloon and get through the next year convinced but uncommitted, sustained by the comforting hope that Christmas will soon come again. It will come again. Before long, man’s ancient wish will come true, and we will all be at peace; a restful, dreamless sleep, the revelry ended.
God rest ye merry, gentlemen!