MUNICIPAL

'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:

T was an August evening and, in snowy garments clad,

IT

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.

MUNICIPAL

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.

THE LAST DEPARTMENT

Twelve hundred million men are spread
About this Earth, and I and You
Wonder, when You and I are dead,

What will those luckless millions do?

ONE whole or clean,' we cry, 'or free from stain
Of favour.' Wait awhile, till we attain

N°

The Last Department where nor fraud nor fools,

Nor grade nor greed, shall trouble us again.

Fear, Favour, or Affection-what are these
To the grim Head who claims our services?
I never knew a wife or interest yet
Delay that pukka step, miscalled 'decease';

When leave, long over-due, none can deny;
When idleness of all Eternity

Becomes our furlough, and the marigold
Our thriftless, bullion-minting Treasury

Transferred to the Eternal Settlement,
Each in his strait, wood-scantled office pent,
No longer Brown reverses Smith's appeals,
Or Jones records his Minute of Dissent.

THE LAST DEPARTMENT

And One, long since a pillar of the Court,
As mud between the beams thereof is wrought;
And One who wrote on phosphates for the crops
Is subject-matter of his own Report.

[These be the glorious ends whereto we pass-
Let Him who Is, go call on Him who Was;
And He shall see the mallie steals the slab
For currie-grinder, and for goats the grass.]

A breath of wind, a Border bullet's flight.
A draught of water, or a horse's fright—
The droning of the fat Sheristadar
Ceases, the punkah stops, and falls the night

For you or Me. Do those who live decline
The step that offers, or their work resign?
Trust me, To-day's Most Indispensables,
Five hundred men can take your place or mine.