The courts are dismantled, neglected,
The gates are deserted and barred
And those once so joyful—dejected.
Are doing their "three months' hard."

Up the hill for a term of hard labour,
With a spirit that never was broke,
You will find every man and his neighbour
Each doing the Government stroke.

Each man is the pride of some calling,
A bright and particular star,
From the foreman, who dies all the bawling,
To the clerk-a light of the bar.

And now in variety riggings,
Each a pick and a shovel has brought,
So that when they go back to their diggings
Next year, they 'll be not—out of court.

"It is a matter for regret," remarked Neave, meditatively, as raised his pickaxe for another mighty stroke, "It is a matter for regret to the development of the highest mental power."

—Extract from Beere's "Philosophical Converstions." (British Navvy Series.)

Ours is so young a club," wrote the official recorder in the first number of The Spike, "that this historian has been unable to ascertain that any of its members have attained fame through the practice of moral qualities acquired on its parliamentary Tennis Court." The day of Victoria College on the Parliamentary Tennis Courts is drawing to a page 40 close . Soon they will be deserted, except for a few wandering ghosts which will ever hover round the sacred spot. But the moral qualities, forsooth! That historian lived to see the old courts deserted by men who were willing to forsake the delights of racket and flannel for the stern hardship of shovel and moleskin. That historian himself wielded a festive pickaxe about the time the photograph was taken on Saturday the 9th September, 1905. When the historian of the future tells of the opening to Courts on the hill the list of moral heroes will be too long to publish.

- - - -

The committee which had been set up at Annual Meeting to watch the College site, the College Council, and things in general, in the interests of the Tennis Club, sought inspiration on several occasions in deep draughts of "Kiosk" tea—and waited developments. The site of the Courts was raised and leveled at the instance of the Council by means of earth taken from the contract excavations. Would be needed for four courts, and that even for three a perceptible slice of the hill would have to be cut away.

- - - -

Now the tennis season was close at hand, and if the work was to be of use for this season something must be done at once. But there were no funds. It dawned on the Committee that if the work was to be done at all it must be done for love. But love, though an excellent thing in itself, does not appeal to building contractors in their capacity as contractors. So it fell that the appeal was made to the more susceptible hearts of the students, and on the first auspicious day thirty-two amateur navies met to do battle on Salamanca Hill.

- - - -