6 
The Perennial Adventure 
The East Denver High School principal, James H. Baker 
(later President of the University of Colorado) taught his entire 
student body in one room. In such a small group Alice Eastwood 
could not long remain unknown and unappreciated. She was pop¬ 
ular with fellow students, received a prize in algebra, and special 
attention from the principal. All through high school he directed 
her reading, to include Dickens, Thackeray, Scott. John Bur¬ 
roughs led naturally to Thoreau. Maudsley’s “Body and Mind” 
piqued her interest in the insoluble mysteries of life. 
Junior year was eventful. Somewhat to her dismay, she learned 
that her father planned to marry again, and that she must play 
second fiddle. But the stepmother was a teacher, a Unitarian from 
Newburyport, Massachusetts, and a kindly woman. Actually life 
became easier for Alice, until her father lost money in the new 
store. Then she went to work again. By studying alone at night, 
and sometimes consulting her stepmother, she kept up with her 
class and re-entered it as a senior, to be one of the early graduates 
of East Denver High School. 
To earn her way senior year, she got up at four every morning 
to lay and light furnace fires in the school building. Afternoons 
from two to six and all day Saturday she worked in the ready¬ 
made dress department of a downtown store for $ 12 a week. She 
had apprenticed herself the previous summer, without pay, to be 
cutter’s assistant j so now, by basting linings in basques and work- 
ing innumerable buttonholes, she managed to pay all her own 
expenses. And when graduation came, she had friends in two 
worlds. Elected class valedictorian, she wore a beautiful white 
