Now this shows that poets should not write about what they do
not understand. Any one could have told him that Sappers and Gunners are
perfectly different branches of the Service. But, if you correct the sentence,
and substitute Gunner for Sapper, the moral comes just the same.
THE OTHER MAN.
When the earth was sick and the skies were gray,
And the woods were rotted with rain,
The Dead Man rode through the autumn day
To visit his love again.
--Old Ballad.
Far back in the "seventies," before they had built any Public Offices at
Simla, and the broad road round Jakko lived in a pigeon-hole in the P. W. D.
hovels, her parents made Miss Gaurey marry Colonel Schreiderling. He could not
have been MUCH more than thirty-five years her senior; and, as he lived on two
hundred rupees a month and had money of his own, he was well off. He belonged
to good people, and suffered in the cold weather from lung complaints. In the
hot weather he dangled on the brink of heat-apoplexy; but it never quite
killed him.
Understand, I do not blame Schreiderling. He was a good husband according to
his lights, and his temper only failed him when he was being nursed. Which was
some seventeen days in each month.
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