Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/54

40 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.