Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads | Page 5

the selfsame weapon, can attain as high."
Only

he did not possess when he made the trial,
Wicked wit of C-lv-n,
irony of L--l.
[Men who spar with Government need, to back their blows,

Something more than ordinary journalistic prose.]
Never young Civilian's prospects were so bright,
Till an Indian paper
found that he could write:
Never young Civilian's prospects were so
dark,
When the wretched Blitzen wrote to make his mark.
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 pass him by;
Wondered where the hitch was;
called it most unfair.

That was seven years ago--and he still is there!
MUNICIPAL
"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 Dykes, 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
shikarred 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.
And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair;
So
Cupid and Apollo linked, per heliograph, the pair.
At dawn, across
the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise-- At e'en, the dying
sunset bore her husband's homilies.
He warned her 'gainst seductive youths in scarlet clad and gold, As
much as 'gainst the blandishments paternal of the old;
But kept his
gravest warnings for (hereby the ditty hangs)
That snowy-haired
Lothario, Lieutenant-General Bangs.
'Twas General Bangs, with Aide and Staff, who tittupped on the way,
When they beheld a heliograph tempestuously at play.
They thought
of Border risings, and of stations sacked and burnt-- So stopped to take
the message down--and this is what they learnt--
"Dash dot dot, dot, dot dash, dot dash dot" twice. The General swore.
"Was ever General Officer addressed as 'dear' before?
"'My Love,' i'
faith! 'My Duck,' Gadzooks! 'My darling popsy-wop!' "Spirit of great
Lord Wolseley, who is on that mountaintop?"
The artless Aide-de-camp was mute; the gilded Staff were still, As,

dumb with pent-up mirth, they booked that message from the hill; For
clear as summer lightning-flare, the husband's warning ran:-- "Don't
dance or ride with General Bangs--a most immoral man."
[At dawn, across