Municipal
“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 the driver, and across my mind it rushedThat 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 greyBefore 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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