l the squalor and poverty.
Lives were not worth two monsoons' purchase, and perhaps the knowledge
of this a little coloured the rhymes when they sang:

In a very short time you're released from all cares--
If the Padri's asleep, Mr. Oldham reads prayers!

The note of physical discomfort that runs through so much Anglo-Indian
poetry had been struck then. You will find it most fully suggested in
'The Long, Long Indian Day,' a comparatively modern affair; but there is
a set of verses called 'Scanty Ninety-five,' dated about Warren
Hastings's time, which gives a lively idea of what our seniors in the
Service had to put up with. One of the most interesting poems I ever
found was written at Meerut, three or four days before the Mutiny broke
out there. The author complained that he could not get his clothes
washed nicely that week, and was very facetious over his worries.

[Illustration: SUNG TO THE BANJOES ROUND CAMP FIRES]

My verses had the good fortune to last a little longer than some others,
which were more true to facts and certainly better workmanship. Men in
the Army, and the Civil Service, and the Railway, wrote to me saying
that the rhymes might be made into a book. Some of them had been sung to
the banjoes round camp fires, and some had run as far down coast as
Rangoon and Moulmein, and up to Mandalay. A real book was out of the
question, but I knew that Rukn-Din and the office plant were at my
disposal at a price, if I did not use the office time. Also, I had
handled in the previous year a couple of small books, of which I was
part owner, and had lost nothing. So there was built a sort of a book, a
lean oblong docket, wire-stitched, to imitate a D.O. Government
envelope, printed on one side only, bound in brown paper, and secured
with red tape. It was addressed to all heads of departments and all
Government officials, and among a pile of papers would have deceived a
clerk of twenty years' service. Of these 'books' we made some hundreds,
and as there was no necessity for advertising, my public being to my
hand, I took reply-postcards, printed the news of the birth of the book
on one side, the blank order-form on the other, and posted them up and
down the Empire from Aden to Singapore, and from Quetta to Colombo.
There was no trade discount, no reckoning twelves as thirteens, no
commission, and no credit of any kind whatever. The money came back in
poor but honest rupees, and was transferred from the publ