Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/40

PUBLIC WASTE

Walpole talks of "a man and his price,"
⁠List to a ditty queer—
The sale of a Deputy-Acting-Vice-
⁠Resident-Engineer
Bought like a bullock, hoof and hide,
By the Little Tin Gods on the Mountain Side.

By the laws of the Family Circle 'tis written in letters of brass
That only a Colonel from Chatham can manage the Railways of State,
Because of the gold on his breeks, and the subjects wherein he must pass;
Because in all matters that deal not with Railways his knowledge is great.

Now Exeter Battleby Tring had laboured from boyhood to eld

On the Lines of the East and the West, likewise of the North and South;

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