THE BETROTHED

"You must choose between me and your cigar."

Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout, For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out,

We quarreled about Havanas we fought o'er a good cheeroot,

And I know she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.

Open the old cigar-box

- let me consider a space; In the soft blue veil of the vapor, musing on Maggie's

face.

Maggie is pretty to look at Maggie's a loving lass, But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass.

There's peace in a Laranaga, there 's calm in a Henry Clay,

But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away

Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and

brown

But I could not throw away Maggie, for fear o' the talk o' the town!

The Betrothed

Maggie, my wife at fifty-gray and dour and oldWith never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold!

And the light of Days that have Been, the dark of the Days that Are,

And Love's torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar

The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket

With never a new one to light though it's charred and black to the socket.

Open the old cigar-box-let me consider a while
Here is a mild Manilla - there is a wifely smile.

Which is the better portion-bondage bought with ring,

Or a harem of dusky beauties fifty tied in a string?

Counselors cunning and silent

tried.

comforters true and

And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride.

Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes, Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids

close.

This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return, With only a Suttee's passion-to do their duty and burn.

pyre.

Suttee: The self-destruction of a widow on her husband's funeral

This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead,

Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead.

The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main,

When they hear my harem is empty, will send me my brides again.

I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouth withal,

So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers

fall.

I will scent 'em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides,

And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides.

For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between

The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o' Teen.

And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear,

But I have been Priest of Partagas a matter of seven

year;

And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light

Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight.

The Betrothed

And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove,

But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o'-theWisp of Love.

Will it see me safe through my journey, or leave me bogged in the mire ?

Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire?

Open the old cigar-box- let me consider anew

Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?

A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke ; And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke.

Light me another Cuba; I hold to my first-sworn

Vows,

If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for spouse !

GRIFFEN'S DEBT

Imprimis he was "broke." Thereafter left
His regiment, and, later, took to drink ;

Then, having lost the balance of his friends,
"Went Fantee "-joined the people of the land,
Turned three parts Mussulman and one Hindu,
And lived among the Gauri villagers,

Who gave him shelter and a wife or twain,
And boasted that a thorough, full-blood sahib
Had come among them. Thus he spent his time,
Deeply indebted to the village shroff

(Who never asked for payment), always drunk,
Unclean, abominable, out-at-heels;

Forgetting that he was an Englishman.

You know they dammed the Gauri with a dam, And all the good contractors scamped their work, And all the bad material at hand

Was used to dam the Gauri-which was cheap,

And, therefore, proper.

Then the Gauri burst,

And several hundred thousand cubic tons

Of water dropped into the valley, flop,

And drowned some five and twenty villagers,

And did a lakh or two of detriment

To crops and cattle. When the flood went down We found him dead, beneath an old dead horse,

Shroff: Money lender.
Lakh: $25,000, about.