THOUGHTS IN A COLD SNAP.

It is going to be very cold when I get up, which will be almost immediately—very cold indeed. It was zero yesterday; it may be below the line to-day, twenty or thirty below the line—even more. A little slam, perhaps, in spades. There are icicles hanging from the window-frame; and it is a curious thing, when one comes to think of it, what a lot of things there are that rhyme with icicle: tricycle, bicycle, phthisical, psychical—no, I am wrong, not psychical ...

Anyhow, it is going to be very cold. Some people do not mind the cold. There are people bathing in the Serpentine at this moment, I suppose, and apparently nothing can be done about it. They ju-just break the ice and ju-jump in. And yet it is not their ice; it is the King's. It seems to me that it ought to be made illegal, this breaking of the King's ice, like the breaking of windows in Whitehall. These ice-breakers seem to me as bad as the people who say, "It's going to be a nice old-fashioned Christmas, with Yule-logs and things." Not that I object to Yule-logs. I have some in my own Yule-shed, hand-sawn by myself, though I am not a good hand-sawyer. When I get about halfway through, the saw begins to gnash its teeth and groan at me. It seems to me that what is wanted is a machine for turning the logs round and round while one holds the saw steady. But there is something beautiful in burning the Yule-logs of one's own fashioning that makes one feel like the sculptor when at last the living beauty has burst forth under his chisel from the shapeless stone. Besides, they are cheaper than coal.

As I say, when people talk of "Yule-logs and things," it is not the Yule-logs that I object to. It is the things. Nasty cold things like clean shirts and collars and bedroom door-handles—there ought to be hot water in bedroom door-handles—nasty cold things that make one say "Ugh." I have a theory that the word "Ugh" was invented on some such morning as this. Previously people had been contented with noises like "Ouch" and "Ouf" and "Ur-r," though they realised how inadequate they were. And then one day, one very cold ⁰⁄40 day, inspiration came to the frenzied brain of a genius, and he wrote down that single exquisite heart-cry and hurried it off to the printer. People knew then that the supreme mating of sound and sense, which we have agreed to call poetry, had once more been achieved.

But I have wandered a little from the Serpentine. Has it ever struck you what people who bathe in the Serpentine on days like this are like during the rest of the year?

Suppose it is a balmy spring morning, a mild temperate afternoon in early summer, a soft autumn twilight when everyone else is happy and content, what are they doing then? Positively bathed in perspiration, groaning under the burden of the sun, mopping their shining foreheads and putting cabbage-leaves under their hats. And then at last comes the day they have longed for and looked forward to all through the twelve-months' heat-wave, a beautiful day forty degrees below the belt. They spring out of bed and fling wide the casement. That is what they intend to do, at least. As a matter of fact, of course, it is stuck, and they have to bash it out with a bolster, sending the icicles clinking into the basement. "Delicious!" they say, leaning out and breathing deep. Then they chip a piece of ice out of the water-jug with a hammer, rub it on their faces and begin to shave.

They shave in their cotton pyjamas, with bare feet, humming a song. Then they put on old flannels and a blazer, wrap a towel round their neck, light a cigarette, pick up a mattock and stroll to Hyde Park. When they get there they feloniously break the King's ice. Then they "ugh." The mere thought of these people ughing with a great splash into the Serpentine makes me feel ill. When I think of them afterwards sitting lazily on the bank and letting the blizzard dry their hair, basking in the snow for an hour or two and reading their morning paper, and every now and then throwing a snowball or a piece of "ugh" into the water, I hate them. Nobody ought to be allowed to bathe in the Serpentine on days like this except the swans, who paddle all night to hold the ice at bay. I wonder if I could get a swan and keep it in the water-jug.

Half-past eight? Yes, I did hear, thank you. I am really going to get up very soon now.

What I am going to do is to make one tiger-like leap—tiger-like leap, I say—for the bathroom door and turn the hot-water tap full on until the whole of the upper part of the house is filled with steam.

I am going to do it this very moment. I—yes—ugh.

Now I come to think of it a tiger-like leap would be quite the wrong idea. I am glad I did not do it. Tigers are not cold when they leap. "Tiger, tiger, burning bright." Tiger, tiger——

What did you say? A quarter to nine? What? And the water-pipes frozen? Are they?

Thankugh.

"WIDOW KISSED BY BURGLAR.

Adventure with a Soft-Voiced Giant.

The gurglar took nothing away with him."

Scots Paper.

"Gurglar" seems the mot juste.

"—— Club.

Monthly medal competition. Returns:—

	Gross.	Hep.	Nett.
F. Slicer	92	8	84
W. H. Putter	103	16	87"

Provincial Paper.

If only the Judicious Hooker had been playing he might have downed them both.

AT THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM.

Mother (trying to calm her lachrymose offspring). "'Ere, Albert—look at the pretty fishes."