Englands abandoned to the fleeting passions,
    Feckless as Fez, hysterical as Gaul,
  All nigger-music and fantastic fashions
    (And not a house from Leith to London Wall);
  Where food and coal are dealt you out in rations
    And you can hardly raise a drink at all,
  And tailors charge you twenty pounds a touch. 
  Is that a place for Nabobs?  No, not much.

  Better were Hind where troubles more or less stick
    To one set style and do not drive you mad
  With changes; where a roof and a domestic,
    Petrol and usquebagh can still be had;
  And one can trust the Taj and the Majestic
    (Bombay hotels be these and none too bad)
  To stand for culture in the hour of need
  And stop one running utterly to seed.

  Hind be it; as for Home—­festina lente;
    Hind be it and a station in the sun,
  Wherein if peace abideth not nor plenty
    At least you are not ruined and undone. 
  I am not coming home in 1920,
    And maybe not in 1921;
  If all the English England’s dead and gone,
  One can remember; one can carry on.

  H.B.

* * * * *

LITTLE TALES FOR YOUNG PLUMBERS.

THE CONVERSION OF GEORGE.

George was a plumber by trade and a striker by occupation.  He did his plumbing in his holidays, when he was not busy.  He liked plumbing, as it gave his throat a rest.  He was really the Champion Long Distance Plumber of the World and had gained the R.S.V.P.’s gold medal for doing the back-in-a-minute-to-get-your-tools in more than two hours.  And his heart was as tender as his feet.  If he heard a clock strike he longed to strike in sympathy, so that hard-hearted employers who knew George’s weakness always kept their time-pieces muffled.

The bursting of our water-pipe was the means of bringing me into touch with George.  He joined our bathing-party in the front hall, and said simply, “I am the plumber.”  Just like that.  He then said that he would swim home for his tools, as he had forgotten the can-opener.  When he got back Auntie was drowned.

He did not stay long, as he had to go on sympathetic strike with the graziers.  He was not really a grazier as well as a plumber, but his heart was so tender that he couldn’t keep on plumbing so as to give satisfaction, he said, as long as the graziers were not grazing, so to speak.  It didn’t really matter.  Nothing matters nowadays.  I just went out and sold the house as it stood for an enormous sum and emigrated on the proceeds to Tooting Bec.

But this tract deals with George and his conversion, and has been written specially to be put into the hands of young plumbers.  Let us see then how George gave up his sinful ways and how his heart was changed.

It began with his tooth—­an old, old tooth.  It had done some work in its time, but it decided to strike.  And strike it did.  George gave it beer—­Government beer—­and it hit George back, good and hard.  George then began to talk to it.  He asked if it knew what it was doing of.  He threatened it with more Government beer if it didn’t get on with its work more quiet-like.  The tooth sat up then and bit George.