Volume 147 — THE MISSIONARY.
Reading edition
Where Oriental calm derides Our Occidental stress And Ninety-seven E. collides With Five-and-twenty S., You’ll find a product of the West, A Bachelor of Arts, Who blends a mind of youthful zest With patriarchal parts. Each morning mid his rubber trees He rides an ancient hack, A cassock girt above his knees, A topee tilted back. Now reining in his steed to preach A parable on sap, Now vaulting from his seat to teach The proper way to tap. His swart disciples knit their brows O’er algebraic signs; They build their byres, they milk their cows On scientific lines. They use his microscope and gaze On strange bacterial risks; They tuns their daily hymns of praise To gramophonic discs. And every evening after grace, When converts clear the cloth, He pins an orchid to its place Or camphorates a moth. Out of the world his path may run, Yet still in worldly wise He’ll talk of feats with rod or gun, A twinkle in his eyes, And tell of tiger-stalking nights, Of mornings with the snipe, With never a pause save when he lights An antiquated pipe. We others earn our pensioned ease, The furlough of our kind; We book our berths, we cross the seas, But he shall stay behind, Plodding his round of feast and fast, Dreaming the dreams of yore, Of England as he saw her last In 1884. J. M. S.
More Impending Apologies.
I.
“GREAT GALA NIGHT when JOSEPHINE DAVIS will bid ‘Au Revoir’ to Bombay By Special Request.”
Bombay Chronicle.
II.
“At the hour of six the Rev. S. F. Collier gave out the only possible hymn—
‘And are we yet alive And see each other’s face!’”
Yorkshire Post.