If the stock had not been old and overcrowded, the Wax-moth would never have entered; but where bees are too thick on the comb there must be sickness or parasites. The heat of the hive had risen with the June honey-flow, and though the farmers worked, until their wings ached, to keep people cool, everybody […]

There is sorrow enough in the natural wayFrom men and women to fill our day;But when we are certain of sorrow in store,Why do we always arrange for more?Brothers and sisters, I bid you bewareOf giving your heart to a dog to tear. Buy a pup and your money will buyLove unflinching that cannot lie–Perfect […]

0ne night, a very long time ago, I drove to an Indian military cantonment called Mian Mir to see amateur theatricals. At the back of the Infantry barracks a soldier, his cap over one eye, rushed in front of the horses and shouted that he was a dangerous highway robber. As a matter of fact, […]

I am the land of their fathers,In me the virtue stays;I will bring back my children,After certain days.Under their feet in the grassesMy clinging magic runs.They shall return as strangers,They shall remain as sons.Over their heads in the branchesOf their new-bought, ancient trees,I weave an incantation,And draw them to my knees.Scent of smoke in the […]

My friend, if cause doth wrest thee,Ere folly hath much oppressed thee,Far from acquaintance kest theeWhere country may digest thee . . .Thank God that so hath blessed thee,And sit down, Robin, and rest thee.THOMAS TUSSER. It came without warning, at the very hour his hand was outstretched to crumple the Holz and Gunsberg Combine. […]

“O’ ever the knightly years were goneWith the old world to the grave,I was a king in BabylonAnd you were a Christian slave.”-W. E. Henley. His name was Charlie Mears; he was the only son of his mother who was a widow, and he lived in the north of London, coming into the City every […]

Life liveth but in life, and doth not roamTo other lands if all be well at home:“Solid as ocean foam,” quoth ocean foam. The room was blue with the smoke of three pipes and a cigar. The leave-season had opened in India, and the first-fruits on this side of the water were “Tick” Boileau, of […]

Gloriana! The Don may attack usWhenever his stomach be fain;He must reach us before he can rack us . . .And where are the galleons of Spain? Dobson. One of the many beauties of a democracy is its almost superhuman skill in developing troubles with other countries and finding its honour abraded in the process. […]

In the Army List they still stand as “The Fore and Fit Princess Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen-Anspach’s Merther-Tydfilshire Own Royal Loyal Light Infantry, Regimental District 329A,” but the Army through all its barracks and canteens knows them now as the “Fore and Aft.” They may in time do something that shall make their new title honourable, but at […]

Hurrah! hurrah! a soldier’s life for me!Shout, boys, shout! for it makes you jolly and free. The Ramrod Corps. People who have seen say that one of the quaintest spectacles of human frailty is an outbreak of hysterics in a girls’ school. It starts without warning, generally on a hot afternoon, among the elder pupils. […]

Not only to enforce by command but to encourage by example the energetic discharge of duty and the steady endurance of the difficulties and privations inseparable from Military Service. – Bengal Army Regulations. They made Bobby Wick pass an examination at Sandhurst. He was a gentleman before he was gazetted, so, when the Empress announced […]

The Earth gave up her dead that tide,Into our camp he came,And said his say, and went his way,And left our hearts aflame. Keep tally – on the gun-butt scoreThe vengeance we must take,When God shall bring full reckoning,For our dead comrade’s sake. Ballad. Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful […]

Sec. 7 (1) – Causing or Conspiring with other persons to cause a mutiny or sedition in forces belonging to Her Majesty’s Regular forces, Reserve forces, Auxiliary forces, or Navy. When three obscure gentlemen in San Francisco argued on insufficient premises they condemned a fellow-creature to a most unpleasant death in a far country which […]

We’re goin’ ‘ome, we’re goin’ ‘ome –Our ship is at the shore,An’ you mus’ pack your ‘aversack,For we won’t come back no more.Ho, don’t you grieve for me,My lovely Mary Ann,For I’ll marry you yet on a fourp’ny bit,As a time-expired ma-a-an Barrack Room Ballad. AN awful thing has happened! My friend, Private Mulvaney, who […]

A lamentable tale of thingsDone long ago, and ill done. The horror, the confusion, and the separation of the murderer from his comrades were all over before I came. There remained only on the barrack-square the blood of man calling from the ground. The hot sun had dried it to a dusky gold-beater- skin film, […]

IF THOUGHT can reach to Heaven, On Heaven let it dwell, For fear that Thought be given Like power to reach to Hell. For fear the desolation And darkness of thy mind, Perplex an habitation Which thou hast left behind. Let nothing linger after– No whispering ghost remain, In wall, or beam, or rafter, Of […]

IN the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly […]

In the beginning of years, when the world was so new and all, and the Animals were just beginning to work for Man, there was a Camel, and he lived in the middle of a Howling Desert because he did not want to work; and besides, he was a Howler himself. So he ate sticks […]

ONCE upon a time, on an uninhabited island on the shores of the Red Sea, there lived a Parsee from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. And the Parsee lived by the Red Sea with nothing but his hat and his knife and a cooking-stove of the kind that […]

IN the days when everybody started fair, Best Beloved, the Leopard lived in a place called the High Veldt. ‘Member it wasn’t the Low Veldt, or the Bush Veldt, or the Sour Veldt, but the ‘sclusively bare, hot, shiny High Veldt, where there was sand and sandy-coloured rock and ‘sclusively tufts of sandy- yellowish grass. […]