Page 78 - 1928 Hartridge

MD
The A1ice Rosamond Pardee Prize
Last year the Alice Rosamond Pardee Prize, awarded to a member of the Senior English class, was won by Katharine Powell. Her essay
follows.
MY CHANGING IDEAS
The first spark of ambition that I can remember was my desire to be God. Needless to say my aspirations have been somewhat modified since then. There was no thought of irreverence in my mind; to me God was an omnipotent being who sat, day and night, in a large, comfortable arm chair, peering down at the earth and directing the destinies of the pigmies below. He was more of a mysterious king-fairy than a deity, a kindly magician who could turn off the rain when a picnic was in progress, turn it on when Sunday school loomed as an imminent peril, and “ make Kathar­
ine a good girl,” without any conscious effort on Katharine’s part. With all his vast power, it seemed to me that had I been in his place, I could have made a few improvements, f or Instance, there would be lollypop bushes and ice cream trees, and there would surely be a law against hair ribbons, and oh, any number of things that God had evidently not thought
of.
Having soared to the most extreme heights to begin with, there was only one way to go and that was down. The next object of my admiration was the ragman. Here indeed was a free spirit, one who “tolled not,
neither did he spin.” On balmy spring days when little girls were trudg­ ing schoolward to the tune of the three r’s the ragman could be heard chanting the always indistinguishable words of his song. Accompanying
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