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The Spike or Victoria University College Review 1933

The Autocrat of the Bathtub

The Autocrat of the Bathtub

As I was lazily crooning my way through a bath and Luigini's "Ballet Egyptian" I struck a terrible thought and the soap.

The result was chaos and a youth almost permanently partially incapacitated within the meaning of The Workers' Compensation (Consolidated) Act, 1922, and the Amendment thereof. My recollections of the affair, which can only be likened to those of a voyager over Niagara in a barrel, are somewhat indistinct. I believe I must have capsized on the skidding soap and applied my nose and right elbow to various portions of the bath which audibly protested in various keys.

I tottered to bed the better to lick my wounds following the best mythological traditions. Bed reached, I pursued the painful train of thought which had long since been replaced by anxiety as to the natural and probable consequences of spending several desperate seconds under such soapy water as I had unwillingly imbibed.

The cause of this mental and marine disturbance—the fact that I had promised a literary effusion to the Spike Editor and to-morrow was the closing day—you will probably describe as a storm in a teacup. But you do not know our worthy Editor, a man terrible in wrath.

I repeat, the Editor is a man terrible in wrath —I am a man of peace, and Conflicts I abhor. This said, you have the reason of my mute acquiescence in the terrible fate of being compelled to write for his beastly rag.

For look you, who or what if any are our literary lads or lasses {we must not omit the latter): "Parrots who have lived with Karl Marx and learned only his swear-words such as 'bourgeois reactionaries' with which they lash themselves into hysteria of incomprehensibility," you say, and added as an afterthought "Precious little prigs." So be it, I'll none of their lily-livered pusillanimity or that priggish precocity. I, like Winnie the Pooh, am a bear with very little brain.

I shall avoid the Editor until closing-day is long since gone, and then tell him I have lost my muse. But stay—the Editor is a man terrible in wrath. I think I shall post this to him, and smuggle myself out of the country disguised as a searcher for silver. I am a man of peace, and Conflicts I abhor.

"Ajax."