Page Four
THE UNITED AMERICAN
OCTOBER 1925
When Tony, The Greek, Became an American Teacher
By MARY MERRILL FOSTER
WITH AN unwonted spring in her step the teacher
** started home down the path from the little
mountain high school one afternoon in late autumn.
Through a gap in the valley wall the last glimpse of
the sunset still lingered in amethyst light on the
highest ridge, and down across the creek bed came
the clear voices of children returning with’their pine
nut hoard.
Yet it was not the beauty of the shadows falling
on the hillsides and hushing the little village that the
teacher was thinking about. In her mind was the
memory of the first year English class that afternoon,
for the events of this class had repaid her for weeks
of what had seemed to be a losing - struggle to win
the interest of one of her pupils. This was Dick, a
typical mountain boy large for his age, skilled in hunt
ing, horseback riding or driving a car over the rough,
winding roads, but too sincere to pretend an interest
he did not feel in the business and social standards
of speech and writing and in the literature prescribed
for the course.
Now, a part of the teacher’s problem had been left
behind, for Dick had shared with the class his dis
covery that he loved the vivid action and strength
and simplicity of emotion in the “Iliad” and the
“Odyssey” as no teacher’s method for “vitalizing the
English course” could ever have made him do.
Hardly had the class started in a .somewhat con
ventional manner to recount some of the episodes of
Ulysses’ wanderings as given in the Bryant transla
tion, when Dick, top eager to restrain himself, burst
out with, “I know what happened. Tony told that
story down at the station last night. He told a lot
more, too. He must have talked for over an hour.
He said he used to read all those stories at school in
Greece.” The narrator referred to by Dick was Tony
Duskas, the Greek railroad hand. When the one train
a day crept up through the foothills at dusk to spend
the night in the village, it was the custom for men
and boys to leave the steps of the general store and
congregate on the platform of the diminutive, buff
colored station. Here the sight of a school book or a
complaint over a long English lesson to read must have
launched the Greek on the story that held his rough
hearers spellbound.
Dick continued, “But Tony didn’t call him Ulysses.
He had some other name for him.”
“Odysseus?” the teacher suggested.
The boy’s face brightened, “Yes, that was it.” The
teacher called attention to the title of the book they
were reading and explained that Odysseus was the
original Greek form of the name.
So the recitation progressed, Dick contributing
stories that he had heard from the Greek and the
rest of the class catching his enthusiasm. The litera
ture studied in the first year English class had taken
on a new significance for the mountain lad and for
the teacher as well. The change had been wrought
by a Greek railroad hand at a tiny station among
the hills.
The Silent Story of an Ancient Crater
A NIAKCHAK is a crater on the Alaska peninsula.
2-1 It is one of the most remarkable objects on this
continent. The enormous basin floor measures six and
three quarter miles in width. The rock walls that form
the rim of the crater rise in places three thousand feet
above its floor, and a cinder cone in the crater rises
to a height of two thousand two hundred feet. In a
hollow in the crater’s floor lies a lake that is two
and one-half miles long and has an area of two square
miles.
Another measurement of this large crater may be
had by comparing it with better known volcanic
craters, such as Kilauea in the Hawaiian islands, which
has a diameter slightly less than three miles, or the
pit occupied by Crater lake in Oregon, which has a
diameter of about five and one-half miles, both being
smaller than Aniakchak. Estimates of the amount of
material that has been ejected from the present crater
vary greatly, but the smallest quantity indicated by
the available facts is about eight cubic miles, and the
actual quantity may have been more than- sixteen cubic
miles.
There are no records that tell of this volcano having
been in eruption within historic time; in fact, the
channels cut by the streams that flow down its slopes
and the growth of vegetation on the ash from the crater
indicate that Aniakchak crater is one of the oldest in
the whole series of volcanoes along the Aleutian range.
Indeed, the lower part of the cone in which the crater
is situated may possibly have been formed before the
last great period of glaciation, for some of the valleys
that score its sides appear broad, as if they had been
once occupied by ice and were later partly filled by
volcanic ash.
The Aniakchak district, with its broad prairie like
valleys, rimmed by majestic sharp peaked moun
tains, is impressive and in many respects unique. The
former scene of terrific earth convulsions is now
almost oppressively quite, and the sombre landscape,
overswept by fitfully driven clouds, presents an aspect
that is most weird.
Aniakchak crater was discovered in August, 1922,
by a party from the department of the interior in
charge of R. H. Sargent of the geological survey, while
they were searching for possible petroleum bearing
areas in the Alaska peninsula. A report by W. R.
Smith, the geologist of this party, which has recently
been issued as professional paper 132-J of the geologi
cal survey, gives a detailed description and views of
the crater and its surroundings.
If this life is unhappy, it is a burden to us which it is diffi
cult to bear; if it is in every respect happy, it is dreadful to
be deprived of it; so that in either case the result is the same,
for we must exist in anxiety and apprehension. —La Bruyers.