(4) The Editor of "The Spike."

He wore a wet towel about his head; his eyes were red and tired; and barricading his chair stood piles of Latin, German, and Polynesian dictionaries, works on synonyms, on philology, on the dative case and other kindred topics. He looked upon me with a hopeless stare.

"What a loves tricken lot of loons we keep up here," he ejaculated. "Nothing but love poems, thousands and thousands of spring epics, greener and more distasteful most of them than spring onions. Calflove, too, I'll wager. Look at this lot."

He snatched a manuscript from the top of his bundle and read:

The little archer called one day,
His arrow took my heart away;
He shot it at your feet, and then
Went laughing after other men.

It still lies bleeding. Tortured so,
'Twill bleed to death ere love can know
If it was shot is vain, or dies
To escort yours to paradise.

"You know a chap has to be a bit of a mugwump to turn out stuff like that. Besides the last rhyme's not a rhyme at all. Why can't finish off his heartthrobs decently?

"Oh, of course, the job has its compensations. You sometimes get sidelights on the old history of the College, and it's good to think that before the War, at any rate, the Muses sometimes loitered here. I suppose the shipping-fares are too high now for them, poor dears.

page 53

"For instance, the other day I noticed an effort that came in too late for one of the issues. Do you remember the row between the Students' Association and the Haeremai Club anent having claretcup at dances? The Students' Association reckoned it was alcoholic liquor or something, and shouldn't be allowed in the Gymnasium. Some bean wrote an "Ode to the Haeremai Club," which reads like this:—

Oh, modest one and diffident!
Thou violet, scarcely evident,
That blooms as if by accident

Along the river's brink!
Remember, oh thou modest one,
That it is never, never done
To have that "daughter of the sun,"
The claretcup, to drink.
Such things will soften up the brain,
You'll never be the same again,
Your lips will mutter things profane,
The while your eyes grow bleary;
You'll shave the doorway, stagger on
Hat all awry, and try to fon—
Dle policemen, find the keyhole gone—
You know you'll do so, dearie.
^*Joseph has said so. Just succumb.
"The Licensing Referendum^†
Should compensate with quite a sum
Poor mortals such as you are.
Besides, you'll grow a big strong man,
Muscles and frame Olympian,
A brain that scorns the tippling clan
Who end at Porirua.

"There isn't anything wonderful about that, but I wish some of the present crowd would try and write something to keep their memories alive. Don't seem to have an original idea amongst them, and when they're supposed to be the brightest intellects of the country—gadzooks, it makes me swoon."

My hand got writer's cramp, and I couldn't get a word in edgeways. I left.