Rudyard Kipling - Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads

“Now there were two men in one city;
the one rich and the other poor.”

Jack Barrett went to Quetta
Because they told him to.
He left his wife at Simla
On three-fourths his monthly screw:
Jack Barrett died at Quetta
Ere the next month’s pay he drew.

Jack Barrett went to Quetta.
He didn’t understand
The reason of his transfer
From the pleasant mountain-land:
The season was September,
And it killed him out of hand.

Jack Barrett went to Quetta,
And there gave up the ghost,
Attempting two men’s duty
In that very healthy post;
And Mrs. Barrett mourned for him
Five lively months at most.

Jack Barrett’s bones at Quetta
Enjoy profound repose;
But I shouldn’t be astonished
If now his spirit knows
The reason of his transfer
From the Himalayan snows.

And, when the Last Great Bugle Call
Adown the Hurnal throbs,
When the last grim joke is entered
In the big black Book of Jobs,
And Quetta graveyards give again
Their victims to the air,
I shouldn’t like to be the man
Who sent Jack Barrett there.

Ere the steamer bore him Eastward, Sleary was engaged to marry
An attractive girl at Tunbridge, whom he called “my little Carrie.”

Sleary’s pay was very modest; Sleary was the other way.
Who can cook a two-plate dinner on eight poor rupees a day?

Long he pondered o’er the question in his scantly furnished quarters —
Then proposed to Minnie Boffkin, eldest of Judge Boffkin’s daughters.

Certainly an impecunious Subaltern was not a catch,
But the Boffkins knew that Minnie mightn’t make another match.

So they recognised the business and, to feed and clothe the bride,
Got him made a Something Something somewhere on the Bombay side.

Anyhow, the billet carried pay enough for him to marry —
As the artless Sleary put it: – “Just the thing for me and Carrie.”

Did he, therefore, jilt Miss Boffkin – impulse of a baser mind?
No! He started epileptic fits of an appalling kind.

[Of his modus operandi only this much I could gather: —
“Pears’s shaving sticks will give you little taste and lots of lather.”]

Frequently in public places his affliction used to smite
Sleary with distressing vigour – always in the Boffkins’ sight.

Ere a week was over Minnie weepingly returned his ring,
Told him his “unhappy weakness” stopped all thought of marrying.

Sleary bore the information with a chastened holy joy, —
Epileptic fits don’t matter in Political employ, —
Wired three short words to Carrie – took his ticket, packed his kit —
Bade farewell to Minnie Boffkin in one last, long, lingering fit.

Four weeks later, Carrie Sleary read – and laughed until she wept —
Mrs. Boffkin’s warning letter on the “wretched epilept.”…

Year by year, in pious patience, vengeful Mrs. Boffkin sits
Waiting for the Sleary babies to develop Sleary’s fits.

That only a Colonel from Chatham can manage the Railways of State,
Because of the gold on his breeks, and the subjects wherein he must pass;
Because in all matters that deal not with Railways his knowledge is great.

Now Exeter Battleby Tring had laboured from boyhood to eld
On the Lines of the East and the West, and eke of the North and South;
Many Lines had he built and surveyed – important the posts which he held;
And the Lords of the Iron Horse were dumb when he opened his mouth.

Black as the raven his garb, and his heresies jettier still —
Hinting that Railways required lifetimes of study and knowledge —
Never clanked sword by his side – Vauban he knew not nor drill —
Nor was his name on the list of the men who had passed through the “College.”

Wherefore the Little Tin Gods harried their little tin souls,
Seeing he came not from Chatham, jingled no spurs at his heels,
Knowing that, nevertheless, was he first on the Government rolls
For the billet of “Railway Instructor to Little Tin Gods on Wheels.”

Letters not seldom they wrote him, “having the honour to state,”
It would be better for all men if he were laid on the shelf.
Much would accrue to his bank-book, an he consented to wait
Until the Little Tin Gods built him a berth for himself,

“Special, well paid, and exempt from the Law of the Fifty and Five,
Even to Ninety and Nine” – these were the terms of the pact:
Thus did the Little Tin Gods (long may Their Highnesses thrive!)
Silence his mouth with rupees, keeping their Circle intact;

Appointing a Colonel from Chatham who managed the Bhamo State Line
(The which was one mile and one furlong – a guaranteed twenty-inch gauge),
So Exeter Battleby Tring consented his claims to resign,
And died, on four thousand a month, in the ninetieth year of his age!

We have another viceroy now, – those days are dead and done
Of Delilah Aberyswith and depraved Ulysses Gunne.

Delilah Aberyswith was a lady – not too young —
With a perfect taste in dresses and a badly-bitted tongue,
With a thirst for information, and a greater thirst for praise,
And a little house in Simla in the Prehistoric Days.

By reason of her marriage to a gentleman in power,
Delilah was acquainted with the gossip of the hour;
And many little secrets, of the half-official kind,
Were whispered to Delilah, and she bore them all in mind.

She patronized extensively a man, Ulysses Gunne,
Whose mode of earning money was a low and shameful one.
He wrote for certain papers, which, as everybody knows,
Is worse than serving in a shop or scaring off the crows.

He praised her “queenly beauty” first; and, later on, he hinted
At the “vastness of her intellect” with compliment unstinted.
He went with her a-riding, and his love for her was such
That he lent her all his horses and – she galled them very much.

One day, THEY brewed a secret of a fine financial sort;
It related to Appointments, to a Man and a Report.
‘Twas almost worth the keeping, – only seven people knew it —
And Gunne rose up to seek the truth and patiently pursue it.

It was a Viceroy’s Secret, but – perhaps the wine was red —
Perhaps an Aged Councillor had lost his aged head —
Perhaps Delilah’s eyes were bright – Delilah’s whispers sweet —
The Aged Member told her what ‘twere treason to repeat.