Though tangled and twisted the
course of true love
This ditty explains,
No tangle’s so tangled it cannot improve
If the Lover has brains.
Ere the steamer bore him Eastward, Sleary was engaged
to marry
An attractive girl at Tunbridge, whom he called “my
little Carrie.”
Sleary’s pay was very modest; Sleary was the
other way.
Who can cook a two-plate dinner on eight poor rupees
a day?
Long he pondered o’er the question in his scantly
furnished quarters—
Then proposed to Minnie Boffkin, eldest of Judge Boffkin’s
daughters.
Certainly an impecunious Subaltern was not a catch,
But the Boffkins knew that Minnie mightn’t make
another match.
So they recognised the business and, to feed and clothe
the bride,
Got him made a Something Something somewhere on the
Bombay side.
Anyhow, the billet carried pay enough for him to marry—
As the artless Sleary put it:—“Just
the thing for me and Carrie.”
Did he, therefore, jilt Miss Boffkin—impulse
of a baser mind?
No! He started epileptic fits of an appalling
kind.
[Of his modus operandi only this much I could gather:—
“Pears’s shaving sticks will give you little
taste and lots of lather.”]
Frequently in public places his affliction used to
smite Sleary with distressing vigour—always
in the Boffkins’ sight.
Ere a week was over Minnie weepingly returned his
ring,
Told him his “unhappy weakness” stopped
all thought of marrying.
Sleary bore the information with a chastened holy
joy,—
Epileptic fits don’t matter in Political employ,—
Wired three short words to Carrie—took
his ticket, packed his kit—
Bade farewell to Minnie Boffkin in one last, long,
lingering fit.
Four weeks later, Carrie Sleary read—and
laughed until she wept—
Mrs. Boffkin’s warning letter on the “wretched
epilept.” . . .
Year by year, in pious patience, vengeful Mrs. Boffkin
sits
Waiting for the Sleary babies to develop Sleary’s
fits.
Walpole talks of “a man and his
price.”
List
to a ditty queer—
The sale of a Deputy-Acting-Vice-
Resident-Engineer,
Bought like a bullock, hoof and hide,
By the Little Tin Gods on the Mountain
Side.
By the Laws of the Family Circle ’tis written
in letters of brass
That only a Colonel from Chatham can manage the Railways
of State,
Because of the gold on his breeks, and the subjects
wherein he must pass;
Because in all matters that deal not with Railways
his knowledge is great.
Now Exeter Battleby Tring had laboured from boyhood
to eld
On the Lines of the East and the West, and eke of
the North and South;
Many Lines had he built and surveyed—important
the posts which he held;
And the Lords of the Iron Horse were dumb when he
opened his mouth.
