Page:Life's Handicap - Kipling (1891).djvu/21



Wohl auf, my bully cavaliers, We ride to church to-day, The man that hasn't got a horse Must steal one straight away. Be reverent, men, remember This is a Gottes haus. Du, Conrad, cut along der aisle And schenck der whiskey aus. Hans Breitmann's Ride to Church.

ONCE upon a time, very far from England, there lived three men who loved each other so greatly that neither man nor woman could come between them. They were in no sense refined, nor to be admitted to the outer-door mats of decent folk, because they happened to be private soldiers in Her Majesty's Army; and private soldiers of our service have small time for self-culture. Their duty is to keep themselves and their accoutrements specklessly clean, to refrain from getting drunk more often than is necessary, to obey their superiors, and to pray for a war. All these things my friends accomplished; and of their own motion threw in some fighting-work for which the Army Regulations did not call. Their fate sent them to serve in India, which is not E