e'll get you well, and you shall scribble
for many a year to come.'

And I am scribbling still.

'_DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES_'

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

[Illustration: THE NEWSPAPER FILES]

As there is only one man in charge of a steamer, so there is but one man
in charge of a newspaper, and he is the editor. My chief taught me this
on an Indian journal, and he further explained that an order was an
order, to be obeyed at a run, not a walk, and that any notion or notions
as to the fitness or unfitness of any particular kind of work for the
young had better be held over till the last page was locked up to press.
He was breaking me into harness, and I owe him a deep debt of gratitude,
which I did not discharge at the time. The path of virtue was very
steep, whereas the writing of verses allowed a certain play to the mind,
and, unlike the filling in of reading matter, could be done as the
spirit served. Now, a sub-editor is not hired to write verses: he is
paid to sub-edit. At the time, this discovery shocked me greatly; but,
some years later, when I came to be a sort of an editor in charge,
Providence dealt me for my subordinate one saturated with Elia. He
wrote very pretty, Lamblike essays, but he wrote them when he should
have been sub-editing. Then I saw a little of what my chief must have
suffered on my account. There is a moral here for the ambitious and
aspiring who are oppressed by their superiors.

[Illustration: 'YOUR POTERY VERY GOOD, SIR; JUST COMING PROPER LENGTH
TO-DAY']

This is a digression, as all my verses were digressions from office
work. They came without invitation, unmanneredly, in the nature of
things; but they had to come, and the writing out of them kept me
healthy and amused. To the best of my remembrance, no one then
discovered their grievous cynicism, or their pessimistic tendency, and I
was far too busy, and too happy, to take thought about these things.

[Illustration: drawing by Geo. Hutchinson

signed: Sincerely,

Rudyard Kipling]

So they arrived merrily, being born out of the life about me, and they
were very bad indeed, and the joy of doing them was payment a thousand
times their worth. Some, of course, came and ran away again, and the
dear sorrow of going in search of these (out of office hours, and
catching them) was almost better than writing them clear. Bad as they
were, I burned twice as many as were published, and of the survivors at
least two-thirds were cut down at t