WHAT HAPPENED

What became of Mookerjee? Ask Mahommed Yar Prodding Siva's sacred bull down the Bow Bazar. Speak to placid Nubbee Baksh-question land and seaAsk the Indian Congress men-only don't ask me!

THE MAN WHO COULD WRITE

Shun-shun the Bowl! That fatal, facile drink

Has ruined many geese who dipped their quills in't, Bribe, murder, marry, but steer clear of Ink

Save when you write receipts for paid-up bills in't. There may be silver in the 'blue-black'-all

I know of is the iron and the gall.

B

OANERGES BLITZEN, servant of the Queen,
Is a dismal failure-is a Might-have-been.
In a luckless moment he discovered men

Rise to high position through a ready pen.

Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore-'I,
With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high.'
Only he did not possess when he made the trial,
Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony of L-1.

[Men who spar with Government need, to back their blows,

Something more than ordinary journalistic prose.]

Never young Civilian's prospects were so bright,
Till an Indian paper found that he could write:
Never young Civilian's prospects were so dark,
When the wretched Blitzen wrote to make his mark.

THE MAN WHO COULD WRITE

Certainly he scored it, bold, and black, and firm,
In that Indian paper-made his seniors squirm,
Quoted office scandals, wrote the tactless truth—
Was there ever known a more misguided youth?

When the Rag he wrote for praised his plucky game, Boanerges Blitzen felt that this was fame.

When the men he wrote of shook their heads and swore, Boanerges Blitzen only wrote the more;

Posed as Young Ithuriel, resolute and grim,
Till he found promotion didn't come to him;
Till he found that reprimands weekly were his lot,
And his many Districts curiously hot.

Till he found his furlough strangely hard to win,
Boanerges Blitzen didn't care a pin:

Then it seemed to dawn on him something wasn't right-
Boanerges Blitzen put it down to 'spite.'

Languished in a District desolate and dry;
Watched the Local Government yearly pass him by;
Wondered where the hitch was; called it most unfair.

That was seven years ago-and he still is there.

PINK DOMINOES

"They are fools who kiss and tell'-
Wisely has the poet sung.

Man may hold all sorts of posts
If he'll only hold his tongue.

ENNY and Me were engaged, you see,
On the eve of the Fancy Ball;

So a kiss or two was nothing to you
Or any one else at all.

Jenny would go in a domino-
Pretty and pink but warm;

While I attended, clad in a splendid

Austrian uniform.

Now we had arranged, through notes exchanged Early that afternoon,

At Number Four to waltz no more,

But to sit in the dusk and spoon.

[I wish you to see that Jenny and Me
Had barely exchanged our troth;
So a kiss or two was strictly due
By, from, and between us both.]

PINK DOMINOES

When Three was over, an eager lover,
I fled to the gloom outside;
And a Domino came out also

Whom I took for my future bride.

That is to say, in a casual way,
I slipped my arm around her;

With a kiss or two (which is nothing to you),
And ready to kiss I found her.

She turned her head and the name she said
Was certainly not my own;

But ere I could speak, with a smothered shriek
She fled and left me alone.

Then Jenny came, and I saw with shame,

She'd doffed her domino;

And I had embraced an alien waist

But I did not tell her so.

Next morn I knew that there were two

Dominoes pink, and one

Had cloaked the spouse of Sir Julian Vouse,

Our big Political gun.

Sir J. was old, and her hair was gold,

And her eye was a blue cerulean;

And the name she said when she turned her head Was not in the least like 'Julian.'

Now wasn't it nice, when want of pice

Forbade us twain to marry,

That old Sir J. in the kindest way,

Made me his Secre-tarry?