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The Spike: or, Victoria College Review, September 1923

III. The Editor of "The Spike"

III. The Editor of "The Spike"

As might be expected, the office of the "Spike" was situated in a remote corner of the basement. Evading a couple of sinister-looking individuals who were obviously watching the College on behalf of the Police Department, I penetrated to the sanctum sanctorum. The furnishing was poor: it consisted of a chair and a table, the latter quite empty save for the feet of a diminutive fellow occupying the chair. The table impressed me as being symbolic of the "Spike"; why, I could not tell. I interrupted the boy in his meditations.

"Boss in" I queried.

"Meaning?" he countered, nonchalantly.

"His Puissance the Editor," I informed him.

page 28

"I am it—I mean, him," he said, drawing himself up. . . . Well, well, I had expected a Wallace, or a McRae, perhaps even a Bobby Martin-Smith—but a Napoleon! I recovered myself and sat humbly upon the portion of the floor he indicated to me.

"You have come to interview me," he observed, placing the tips of his fingers together in a characteristically parsonical manner and beaming benevolence upon me. "They all do. The Prof. Board interviews me. The Stud. Ass. interviews me. And why not, may I ask ? None are too old to learn—or too young. So fire away."

"You are very busy?" I commenced.

"Exceptionally so," he stated without a blush, comprehending the table with a sweep of his arm. Now, what was it about that table that so suggested the "Spike"? Its emptiness.?

"Literary inspiration," he explained, "is always at its peak about the time when coming exams cast their shadows before. I am entirely submerged then."

"I don't see it," I murmured.

"Very likely not," he conceded. "But you must know that in the darkest hour men yearn most for the light. The intellectual energy which oversleeps itself well into the second term is 'startled into hideous life,' as the poet expresses it, in the third, and then seeks to overleap itself. Mil the spring of a young man's fancy'— how does the dear old hymn go? I remember reading' it quite recently in the pages of a Sydney Varsity journal. 'Fondly turns to thoughts of—'"

"Tramping Clubs," I supplied. "But you fail to appreciate the direction of my doubt. Let me explain. In my youth I studied Evidence; indeed, I studied it under a master, no less than your predecessor, lesser-Professor Wiren...."

At the sound of that name he sprang to his feet. I followed Suit, and we stood in reverent silence for the space of two minutes. Great Arch! Keystone of Sapience and Erudition! What thought, however taking, could add one cubit to that stature? Solemnly we reseated ourselves.

". . . . and," I went on, after a decent interval, "the incredibly exhaustive acquaintance you may be sure I gained with the intricacies of that serried subject fails to recall to me any principle whatever which will give probative value to the association of an exceptionally busy editor with in absolutely empty table."

I passed to recharge my lungs. When one has lost touch with the Debating Society, one quickly loses the ability to speak lengthily upon an empty lung (to mention lungs only). Looking at the table again, I was reminded of the "Spike" more than ever. The Editor gazed upon it with a sombre flicker in his eye.

"This; table," he said morosely, "is reserved for the use of members of the staff only. That is to say, it is not for use at all. Its destiny, I fear, is, as with certain other famous tables, to be broken before it is given to the world. It is an holy table."

His brooding manner as suddenly left him, and a Bolshevik light glowed in his eyes.

"What are tables to us who know?" he passionately demanded, "who scorn dependence upon adventitious materialities and live in a realm of pure thought—aye, even of pure verse? We are the thinkers, the dreamers! Ours not the world of four-legged conveniences or of two-legged inconveniences; ours rather a world of page 29 ideal constructions, of millenial designs—a world reconstituted by intellection, a universe dragged from the darkness of night into the brightness of day...."

"Not to mention a University," I interposed.

"You are only too right," he acknowledged with sadness. "The night may be filled with laughter, but it is the laughter of a linnet singing upon a blackened bough in hell."

("Holy -Moses!" I murmured to the table.)

"This battered caravanserai, this fly-by-night Victoria, this ignis fatuus which we pursue in evening glooms—where does it lead us but into the sloughs and wildernesses of carnal commercialism? We must pierce a way through the deadly murk and flood the future with the sun's effulgence, where under to garner wisdom in happy leisure instead of breathlessly and broken-windedly in the flickering; glimmer of a glorified night-school!"

"Where have you been hearing it glorified?" I desired to know, for I am not only a reader of newspapers but an observer of the modern student as well.

"When the great desideratum has come to pass," he continued, quelling me with a frightful look, "that day shall see our idol no longer a dull, drab, red-eyed thing sprawled upon a clogging clay, but a giant awakened from sleep and working while it is yet day, a scarlet city set upon a golden hill, for all men to lift their eyes to and not merely look askance at. Then shall it truly be a hive of lore and learning, wherein innumerable B.A.'s shall work like bees to stove the comb of scholarship with the honey of all the ages instead of all the money of this. The library shall be a wing the laboratory shall hum with life...."

"And not with dog fish," I yawned. It was wearying stuff to listen to. "Do you really believe the Bolshies will do all that?"

He came to earth. "What organisation are you spying for?" he demanded, truculently.

"The Debating Society, perhaps," I said. "You know its motto, to try all things...."

".... and hold fast to that which pays," he added, sardonically. "Well, it doesn't pay.] was talking to the Well fired League only the other day, and he told me that he had carefully examined the constitution of the Debating Society and was convinced that it aimed at nothing less than the subversion of everything that was fundamental—the League of Nations, the Boy Scouts, the Faseisti, the Yellow Peril, the Rotary Club, and many other organisations too numerous to mention but all qualified for admittance to participation in the process of subversion."

"Horrible," I murmured sympathetically. "Did he offer to explain what he meant by subversion?"

"He'd forgotten for the moment what shade of meaning it was to bear in this case," explained the Editor, "but he assured me that the Society must be pretty bad to merit the application of such a term. For my part, all I can say is that if those terrible infants would only give up their annoying determination to right the world and write the 'Spike' instead, the 'Spike' would be read."

"I'm sure of it," I said. "But why not reduce the price?"

"What would you have me charge?" he inquired, cautiously.

"The 'Worker' charges three pence," I suggested.

"The 'Worker' is worth that," he responded gloomily. "Let us change the subject."

page 30

"Well, then," I said, preparing to fix my attention upon that intriguing table, "suppose you tell the world something about the features of the forthcoming issue."

"With all my heart," said he, brightening. "Allowing for adventitious misprints, which occur only when the ignorance of the compositor equals that of the contributor, you may expect the following:

"First, the well-known List of Contents which cunningly conceals the character and quality of the issue and sends the lazy purchaser to the interior of the journal for enlightenment. Next, a thirty-page editorial upon the subject of 'The Ornamental Character of a Divine Discontent,' written and composed wholly by myself, commencing with an anthology of quotations from authorities unknown to the ignorant multitude, and ending similarly—a novel extension to the editorial of the principle underlying that great work, 'Half-hours with the Best Authors.'"

"This will be followed by such of my poetic efforts as can be spared by the 'Bulletin,' 'London Mercury,' etc., etc. I am able to guarantee that it will be ample in quantity, however. The themes will be provocative and amorous—some even imaginative."

"After this there will be some convulsively amusing compositions of my own which I warrant will capture the thrilled attention of the most case-hardened Professorial Board. A novel feature will be a list of the tines imposed by that august body in pursuance of its recently-introduced and ingenious Scheme for Combining the Suppression of Disorder among Students with the Improvement of College Finances. If practicable, the issue will be rounded off with a few Club notes and reports of College activities (which of course do not include anything of a scholastic nature). There is nothing of either literary or artistic value in these last, but one must concede something to the vast body of students whose interests are purely physical. I refuse, however, to publish any Answers to Correspondents, The 'Spike' is not the 'Ladies' Mirror1! That is all, I think."

"You have not mentioned any contributors to the 'Spike' besides yourself," I hinted.

"There are none,' he said. "Well, if you insist—a few. but of doubtful genius, if I may say so. For instance, there is G. G. G. Watson, who submits a piece of sickly sentimentality to which he attaches the ludicrous title 'The Poetry of Procedure.' I could swallow what he terms his 'soul-expressions,' but his Procedure! . . . He is young yet, however, which is more than can be said of S. E, Baume and his 'Opium Pipes of Pan Van.' It makes my head rock to think where on earth he manages to collect all this Chinese junk! K. M. Griffin's tramping sketch 'Roaming with Borneo' would be almost comic relief if it were not so unconvincing. W. J. G. Davidson's 'War— What Ho!' does not suffer from that fault, for the simple reason that it is avowedly flippant. But the author is a man of very indefinite ideas and much addicted to rail-sitting. 'The Parish Pump,' by F Height, now, is a very thoughtful piece, as one might expect, but it is ruined by the spirit of diffidence which is its prevailing note. Charles Pope on 'Don Q.' shows promise. His second attempt at literary work should be quite readable. . . . But I will not weary you with any more of these painful amateurs."

page 31

"Whatever their faults, they should help to pad out the issue," I opined.

"They one and all went into the w.p.b.," he said shortly. "As I explained, there was matter enough. If however, you would care to. ..." He eyed me expectantly.

"Thanks," I said, feeling hurt by the suggestion, "but I send all my stuff to the 'Free Lance.'"

"I should have guessed that," he returned. "Well, good day to you. I am very busy. Don't bang the door."

He put his feet back on the table as I went out. . . . That table? I know now why it so reminded me of the "Spike."

It was wooden, of course.