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THE MAN WHO COULD WRITE

Shun -shun the Bowl! That fatal, facile drink

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Has ruined many geese who dipped their quills in 't ;

Bribe, murder, marry, but steer clear of Ink

Save when you write receipts for paid-up bills in 't
There may be silver in the "blue-back"-all
I know of is the iron and the gall.

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Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen,
Is a dismal failure — is a Might-have-been.
In a luckless moment he discovered men
Rise to high position through a ready pen.

Boanerges Blitzen argued, therefore: "I
With the self-same weapon can attain as high."
Only he did not possess, when he made the trial,
Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony of L-1.

(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 squirın,
Quoted office scandals, wrote the tactless truth-
Was there ever known a more misguided youth?

C-lv-n: Cliveden.

L-1: Lyell; high Indian officials.

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The Man Who Could Write

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 did n'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 did n't care a pin ;

Then it seemed to dawn on him something was n'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.

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MUNICIPAL

"Why is my District death-rate low?"
Said Blinks of Hezebad.

"Wells, drains, and sewage-outfalls are

My own peculiar fad.

I learned a lesson once.

It ran

Thus," quote that most veracious man :—

It was an August evening, and, in snowy garments

clad,

I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezebad; When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all,

A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.

I could n't see the driver, and across my mind it rushed

That the Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone

musth.

I didn't care to meet him, and I could n'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;

Waler: A horse of New South Wales origin.

Musth: The mad rage to which elephants are subject.

Municipal

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

gray

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-forgarbage 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.

Shikarred: Hunted.

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