I have eaten your bread and salt,
      I have drunk your water and wine,
   The deaths ye died I have watched beside,
      And the lives that ye led were mine.

   Was there aught that I did not share
      In vigil or toil or ease,
   One joy or woe that I did not know,
      Dear hearts across the seas?

   I have written the tale of our life
      For a sheltered people's mirth,
   In jesting guise—but ye are wise,
   And ye know what the jest is worth.

   We are very slightly changed
   From the semi-apes who ranged
      India's prehistoric clay;
   Whoso drew the longest bow,
   Ran his brother down, you know,
      As we run men down today.

   "Dowb," the first of all his race,
   Met the Mammoth face to face
      On the lake or in the cave,
   Stole the steadiest canoe,
   Ate the quarry others slew,
      Died—and took the finest grave.

   When they scratched the reindeer-bone
   Someone made the sketch his own,
      Filched it from the artist—then,
   Even in those early days,
   Won a simple Viceroy's praise
      Through the toil of other men.

   Ere they hewed the Sphinx's visage
   Favoritism governed kissage,
   Even as it does in this age.

   Who shall doubt the secret hid
   Under Cheops' pyramid
   Was that the contractor did
      Cheops out of several millions?
   Or that Joseph's sudden rise
   To Comptroller of Supplies
   Was a fraud of monstrous size
      On King Pharoah's swart Civilians?

   Thus, the artless songs I sing
   Do not deal with anything
      New or never said before.

   As it was in the beginning,
   Is today official sinning,
      And shall be forevermore.

   Old is the song that I sing—
      Old as my unpaid bills—
   Old as the chicken that kitmutgars bring
   Men at dak-bungalows—old as the Hills.

   Ahasuerus Jenkins of the "Operatic Own"
   Was dowered with a tenor voice of super-Santley tone.

   His views on equitation were, perhaps, a trifle queer;
   He had no seat worth mentioning, but oh! he had an ear.

   He clubbed his wretched company a dozen times a day,
   He used to quit his charger in a parabolic way,
   His method of saluting was the joy of all beholders,
   But Ahasuerus Jenkins had a head upon his shoulders.

   He took two months to Simla when the year was at the