Rudyard Kipling

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' “Chuck him out, the brute!”

But it's “Saviour of 'is country” when the guns begin to shoot.

Everyone is more or less mad on one point.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,

But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;

An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,

Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints.

She read a little of it. I give her review verbatim:—"Oh, your book? It's all about those how-wid Wajahs. I didn't understand it."

Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,

Where there aren't no Ten Commandments, an' a man can raise a thirst.

It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilized Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight.

We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,

We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,

And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.

God help us, for we knew the worst too young!

We're poor little lambs who've lost our way,

Baa! Baa! Baa!

We're little black sheep who've gone astray,

Baa—aa—aa!

Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,

Damned from here to Eternity,

God ha' mercy on such as we,

Baa! Yah! Bah!

He did his best to interest the girl in himself—that is to say, his work—and she, after the manner of women, did her best to appear interested in, what behind his back, she called "Mr. Wressley's Wajahs"; for she lisped very prettily. She did not understand one little thing about them, but she acted as if she did. Men have married on that sort of error before now.

'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor

With a hairy gold crown on 'er 'ead?

She 'as ships on the foam—she 'as millions at 'ome,

An' she pays us poor beggars in red.

To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,

To my brethren in their sorrow overseas,

Sings a gentleman of England cleanly bred, machinely crammed,

And a trooper of the Empress, if you please.

“What are the bugles blowin' for?” said Files-on-Parade.

“To turn you out, to turn you out”, the Colour-Sergeant said.