ines,
And the half of a Mofussil
Shiver at a jackal's whines.

I have heard the monkeys strafing
Ere the dawn begins to glow,
And the long-tailed langur laughing
As he lopes across the snow.

I have heard the rickshaw varlets
Clear the road with raucous cries,
Coolies clad in greens or scarlets,
As a mistress may devise.

Well I know the tittle-tattle
Of the caustic muleteer,
And the Simla seismic rattle
Is familiar to my ear.

Though to-day my feet are climbing
Bleaker heights and harder roads,
Still the Christ-church bells are chiming,
Still the mid-day gun explodes.

But the sound which echoes loudest
Is the sound I never knew
Till I lunched (the very proudest)
With the Staff at A.H.Q.

'Twas a scene of peace and plenty,
Plates a-steam and-spoons a-swoop;
'Twas a sound of five-and-twenty
Hungry Generals drinking soup.

J.M.S.

* * * * *

WAITING FOR THE SPARK.

(_With thanks to the London Telephone Directory._)

I doubt if you have ever taken the book seriously, dear reader (if
any). You dip into it for a moment, choose a suitable quotation and
scribble it down with a blunt pencil on your blotting-pad; then
you wind the lanyard of the listening-box round your neck and start
talking to the germ-collector in that quiet self-assured voice which
you believe spells business success. Then you find you have got on
to the Institute of Umbrella-Fanciers instead of the Incorporated
Association of Fly-Swatters, which you wanted, and have to begin all
over again. But that is not the way to treat literature.

In calm hours of reflection, rather, when the mellow sunlight streams
into the room and, instead of the dull gray buildings opposite, you
catch a mental glimpse of green tree-tops waving in the wind, and
hear, above the rumbling of the busy 'buses, the buzzes ... the
bumbling ... what I mean to say is you ought to sit down calmly and
read the book from cover to cover, as I am doing now.

For it isn't like a mere Street Directory, which puts all the plot
into watertight compartments, and where possibly all the people in
Azalea Terrace know each other by sight, even across the gap where it
says:--

_Here begins Aspidistra Avenue_, like the lessons in church.

Nor, again, is it like _Who's What_, where your imagination is
hampered and interfered with by other people butting in to tell
you