Education: PERLIE HOGG

Because it was found that students in Muncie, Ind.’s Central High School were using an air-shaft in the building for sur reptitious smoking, officials had it sealed up four years ago. Soon the passage was forgotten, new classes came and went, found other places in which to smoke.

Last week the old shaft was re-opened for repairs. School was out but officials were hastily summoned. Crouched at the bottom of the shaft, by its side a jackknife, a pair of work shoes, a few shreds of moldering cloth, lay a dusty skeleton. The skull was cracked. It had been a youth of from 16 to 20 years old. It had been there perhaps ten years. That was all: none could remember any disappearances or accidents. Many students had come & gone.

Then came one Charles Cooper to examine the skeleton. It was his nephew Perlie, he said, 16-year-old Perlie Guelsby Hogg who disappeared Dec. 16, 1922. He remembered that “Perlie was carefree and happy when he started out to school that morning. He was thinking of Christmas vacation and the good times he could have hunting. He didn’t have any enemies. … I worried for weeks about his disappearance. . . .”