4Ya Speaking!

We have much pleasure in introducin' to listeners the world-famed assistant announcer at 4YA. Nesbit writes up a full confession, specially for "Smad," in which he laid his soul so bare that we had to cover it over again, or parts of it. Here is a sample:—

"The Edinburgh of the South (Heaven help Edinburgh) is very like the city "Suprema a Situ," save that its motto is one word only—"Speights." Set in billowy hills at the end of a shallow fiord, Dunedin innocently spoils the scenery that might have been . . . .

"The University of Otago. A magnificent pile reeking of money and Presbyterianism—but despite this and the proximity of at least a dozen churches the students are students! But the University Library? What a disappoinment! It is not more than the size of the English and French sections of the V.U.C. Library. And the Law Section consists of—Four Shelves"

The Whisperers

All demons of hell's emerald flames,
Pixies, leprechauns, pachyderms,
Serpents, lizards, cockatrice,
Slimy toads and crawling worms,
Writhing, slithering, creeping on
Surround this loathsome human twain;
Draw thou nearer, Salamander,
Torture them with fiery pain.

Hound them through illimitable space
With the baying tempest pack;
Torn, distracted, desolate,
Cursed, abandoned, may they lack—
All human contact, human rest,
Companionship, and speech and sight;
Blind, depairing, deaf and dumb—
Simply horrible their plight.
For why ? Their crime ? Their ghastly doom
Is but an infinitismal part
Of all the hell they wrought for me—
And miseries of my gentle heart.
They parked on either side of me,
In lecture—and they always Talked.
With demoniacal sniggery
They talked and Talked and Talked And Talked.

No peaceful slumber came my way;
These fiends in human shape made sure
That wakeful, helpless, hopeless, bored.
Committed, perjured, damned, abhorred,
I must absorb with feigned attention,
Badgered brain, weak protestation,
Their never ending peroration.

Life is Hell !
Lectures torture
Leavened by the disquisition of professorial erudition.

Farewell To A Book Named "Stout."

(Mine Ancient Enemy.)

Farewell ye Stoute imp, farewell.
To-morrow morn I shall thee sell.
Some other seeker after knowledge,
Some other student of this College
Will scan thy pages in confusion
To learn of concept and delusion,
And other things I've now forgotten—
I always thought you simply rotten!
No more my substitute for brain
O'er these I'll rack, for ne'er again
I'll study thee, pernicious bore—
Quoth the student, "Nevermore!"

—P.P.P.