Part 3 (1/2)

Certainly he scored it, bold, and black, and firm, In that Indian paper--made his seniors squirm, Quoted office scandals, wrote the tactless truth-- Was there ever known a more misguided youth?

When the Rag he wrote for praised his plucky game, Boanerges Blitzen felt that this was Fame; When the men he wrote of shook their heads and swore, Boanerges Blitzen only wrote the more:

Posed as Young Ithuriel, resolute and grim, Till he found promotion didn't come to him; Till he found that reprimands weekly were his lot, And his many Districts curiously hot.

Till he found his furlough strangely hard to win, Boanerges Blitzen didn't care to pin: Then it seemed to dawn on him something wasn't right-- Boanerges Blitzen put it down to ”spite”;

Languished in a District desolate and dry; Watched the Local Government yearly pa.s.s him by; Wondered where the hitch was; called it most unfair.

That was seven years ago--and he still is there!

MUNIc.i.p.aL

”Why is my District death-rate low?”

Said Binks of Hezabad.

”Well, drains, and sewage-outfalls are ”My own peculiar fad.

”I learnt a lesson once, It ran ”Thus,” quoth that most veracious man:--

It was an August evening and, in snowy garments clad, I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezabad; When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all, A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.

I couldn't see the driver, and across my mind it rushed That that Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone musth.

I didn't care to meet him, and I couldn't well get down, So I let the Waler have it, and we headed for the town.

The buggy was a new one and, praise d.y.k.es, it stood the strain, Till the Waler jumped a bullock just above the City Drain; And the next that I remember was a hurricane of squeals, And the creature making toothpicks of my five-foot patent wheels.

He seemed to want the owner, so I fled, distraught with fear, To the Main Drain sewage-outfall while he snorted in my ear-- Reached the four-foot drain-head safely and, in darkness and despair, Felt the brute's proboscis fingering my terror-stiffened hair.

Heard it trumpet on my shoulder--tried to crawl a little higher-- Found the Main Drain sewage outfall blocked, some eight feet up, with mire; And, for twenty reeking minutes, Sir, my very marrow froze, While the trunk was feeling blindly for a purchase on my toes!

It missed me by a fraction, but my hair was turning grey Before they called the drivers up and dragged the brute away.

Then I sought the City Elders, and my words were very plain.

They flushed that four-foot drain-head and--it never choked again!

You may hold with surface-drainage, and the sun-for-garbage cure, Till you've been a periwinkle shrinking coyly up a sewer.

I believe in well-flushed culverts....

This is why the death-rate's small; And, if you don't believe me, get s.h.i.+karred yourself. That's all.

A CODE OF MORALS

Lest you should think this story true I merely mention I Evolved it lately. 'Tis a most Unmitigated misstatement.

Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order, And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border, To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.