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Home  »  Rudyard Kipling’s Verse  »  Municipal

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.

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:—

  • IT was an August evening and, in snowy garments clad,

    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.

    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 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.