The Works of Rudyard Kipling Part 3

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.

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 t.i.ttupped 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 the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise-- But, howsoever Love be blind, the world at large hath eyes.]

With d.a.m.natory dot and dash he heliographed his wife Some interesting details of the General's private life.

The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the s.h.i.+ning Staff were still, And red and ever redder grew the General's shaven gill.

And this is what he said at last (his feelings matter not):-- "I think we've tapped a private line. Hi! Threes about there! Trot!"

All honour unto Bangs, for ne'er did Jones thereafter know By word or act official who read off that helio.

But the tale is on the Frontier, and from Michni to Mooltan They know the worthy General as "that most immoral man."

THE LAST DEPARTMENT

Twelve hundred million men are spread About this Earth, and I and You Wonder, when You and I are dead, "What will those luckless millions do?"

None whole or clean, we cry, "or free from stain Of favour." Wait awhile, till we attain The Last Department where nor fraud nor fools, Nor grade nor greed, shall trouble us again.

Fear, Favour, or Affection--what are these To the grim Head who claims our services?

I never knew a wife or interest yet Delay that pukka step, miscalled "decease";

When leave, long overdue, none can deny; When idleness of all Eternity Becomes our furlough, and the marigold Our thriftless, bullion-minting Treasury

Transferred to the Eternal Settlement, Each in his strait, wood-scantled office pent, No longer Brown reverses Smith's appeals, Or Jones records his Minute of Dissent.

And One, long since a pillar of the Court, As mud between the beams thereof is wrought; And One who wrote on phosphates for the crops Is subject-matter of his own Report.