The Gold Bat by P.G. Wodehouse ((A & C Black 1904))

The Field Sports Committee at Wrykyn—­that is, at the school which stood some half-mile outside that town and took its name from it—­were not lavish in their expenditure as regarded the changing accommodation in the pavilion.  Letters appeared in every second number of the Wrykinian, some short, others long, some from members of the school, others from Old Boys, all protesting against the condition of the first, second, and third fifteen dressing-rooms.  “Indignant” would inquire acidly, in half a page of small type, if the editor happened to be aware that there was no hair-brush in the second room, and only half a comb.  “Disgusted O. W.” would remark that when he came down with the Wandering Zephyrs to play against the third fifteen, the water supply had suddenly and mysteriously failed, and the W.Z.’s had been obliged to go home as they were, in a state of primeval grime, and he thought that this was “a very bad thing in a school of over six hundred boys”, though what the number of boys had to do with the fact that there was no water he omitted to explain.  The editor would express his regret in brackets, and things would go on as before.