"Why is my District death-rate low?"
Said Binks of Hezabad.
"Wells, 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 arid 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.