Municipal

by Rudyard Kipling

　　

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"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 he 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 he 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.

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