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The Scrutator
The Scrutator is a pastime of a schizophrenic Newfoundlander of my close acquaintance who likes to pretend to himself – whether as a purely literary conceit or under actual delusion, it might be difficult for a stranger to say – that he is the editor of a popular and influential little periodical in highly successful imitation of Joseph Addison’s eighteenth-century Spectator, with which he was much impressed during his final year of high school at what many people (they mostly attended it, I think) considered to have been, in its time, the best institution of its kind in Newfoundland. This emulation at first was dedicated to personal satire of a few of those of his fellow boarders at St. Bonaventure’s College whom he found (or at least who found him) uncongenial, so that the earliest issues are not being offered here, but he never quite got over the encouragement offered by two of his teachers on their finding he could do something well. As the person, under God, chiefly responsible for his well-being, I hold the copyright in all his work, and have been trying to make that work more widely known, as I (perhaps with some bias) firmly believe it deserves.
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