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.
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 the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her
counsel wise— But, howsoever Love be blind,
the world at large hath eyes.] With damnatory dot
and dash he heliographed his wife Some interesting
details of the General’s private life.
The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the shining 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!”
