gs 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
th