Looking Back at The Budget

Considering the amount of sickness all around, we have been very lucky. Colds and touches of "flu" have had their full share, whilst one or two kind sisters got whooping-cough in time to quarantine their brothers and thus prevented it from entering the school portals; one very mild case of scarlet fever came along with no bad results, and, as we go to press, we hope the term will close with a clean bill of health.

Passing examinations for promotion or entrance into boarding school may, in these days of enhanced competition loom large on the horizon of the young mind; yet the ability to do so is not the hallmark of a liberal education. That boy is on his way to be educated who has begun to put judgment before intelligence, wisdom before knowledge, and self-control before self-indulgence; who has learned to 'take it,' as the phrase goes, be it prize or punishment; who can resist the impulse to throw the blame on others or to think his offence excused because he is not the only one to commit it.

At Christmas in 1910, at the Berkeley Theatre in New York City, the boys of St. Bernard's performed their first Shakespeare play, a quotation from which had already been serving as the motto of THE BUDGET:

"I am Sir Oracle
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!"

On the 17th of December seventy years later, at the Barbizon Plaza Theatre in an unrecognizable altered and enlarged New York, St. Bernard's gave its ninth production of the play The Merchant of Venice-thus emphasizing its clear lead as locally the most popular play in the canon.