SONGS OF SIMLA.
I.—THE BUREAUCRAT.
Along a narrow mountain track
Stalking supreme, alone,
Head upwards, hands behind his back,
He swings his sixteen stone.
Quit of the tinsel and the glare
That lit his forbears' lives,
His tweed-clad shoulders amply bear
The burden that was CLIVE'S.
A man of few and simple needs
He smokes a briar—and yet
His rugged signature precedes
The half an alphabet.
Across these green Elysian slopes
The Secretariat gleams,
The playground of his youthful hopes,
The workshop of his schemes.
He sees the misty depths below,
Where plain and foothills, meet,
And smiles a wistful smile to know
The world is at his feet;
To know that England calls him back;
To know that glory's path
Is leading to a cul de sac
In Cheltenham or Bath;
To know that all he helped to found,
The India of his prayers,
Has now become the tilting ground
Of MILL-bred doctrinaires.
But his the inalienable years
Of faith that stirred the blood,
Of zeal that won through toil and tears,
And after him—the flood.
J.M.S.
Our Feminine Athletes.
"Wanted, Young Lady, vaults bar.—Apply personally, Mrs. ——, Oddfellows' Arms."—Provincial Paper.
