[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!
“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!
