(And not a house from Leith to London Wall);
Where food and coal are dealt you out in rations
And you can hardly raise a drink at all,
And tailors charge you twenty pounds a touch.
Is that a place for Nabobs? No, not much.

Better were Hind where troubles more or less stick
To one set style and do not drive you mad
With changes; where a roof and a domestic,
Petrol and usquebagh can still be had;
And one can trust the Taj and the Majestic
(Bombay hotels be these and none too bad)
To stand for culture in the hour of need
And stop one running utterly to seed.

Hind be it; as for Home--_festina lente_;
Hind be it and a station in the sun,
Wherein if peace abideth not nor plenty
At least you are not ruined and undone.
I am not coming home in 1920,
And maybe not in 1921;
If all the English England's dead and gone,
One can remember; one can carry on.

H.B.

* * * * *

LITTLE TALES FOR YOUNG PLUMBERS.