Mahmoud, who set them up, had an unpleasant way of referring to a new lyric as '_Ek aur chiz_'--one more thing--which I never liked. The job side, too, were unsympathetic, because I used to raid into their type for private proofs with old English and Gothic headlines. Even a Hindoo does not like to find the serifs of his f's cut away to make long s's. And in this manner, week by week, my verses came to be printed in the paper. I was in very good company, for there is always an undercurrent of song, a little bitter for the most part, running through the Indian papers. The bulk of it is much better than mine, being more graceful, and is done by those less than Sir Alfred Lyall--to whom I would apologise for mentioning his name in this gallery--'Pekin,' 'Latakia,' 'Cigarette,' 'O.,' 'T. W.,' 'Foresight,' and others, whose names come up with the stars out of the Indian Ocean going eastward. Sometimes a man in Bangalore would be moved to song, and a man on the Bombay side would answer him, and a man in Bengal would echo back, till at last we would all be crowing together like cocks before daybreak, when it is too dark to see your fellow. And, occasionally, some unhappy Chaaszee, away in the China Ports, would lift up his voice among the tea-chests, and the queer-smelling yellow papers of the Far East brought us his sorrows. The newspaper files showed that, forty years ago, the men sang of just the same subjects as we did--of heat, loneliness, love, lack of promotion, poverty, sport, and war. Further back still, at the end of the eighteenth century, Hickey's _Bengal Gazette_, a very wicked little sheet in Calcutta, published the songs of the young factors, ensigns, and writers to the East India Company. They, too, wrote of the same things, but in those days men were strong enough to buy a bullock's heart for dinner, cook it with their own hands because they could not afford a servant, and make a rhymed jest of all the squalor and poverty. Lives were not worth two monsoons' purchase, and perhaps the knowledge of this a little coloured the rhymes when they sang: In a very short time you're released from all cares-- If the Padri's asleep, Mr. Oldham reads prayers! The note of physical discomfort that runs through so much Anglo-Indian poetry had been struck then. You will find it most fully suggested in 'The Long, Long Indian Day,' a comparatively modern affair; but there is a set of verses called 'Scanty Ninety-five,' dated about Warren Hastings's time, which gives a lively idea of what our seniors in the Service had to put up with. One of the most interesting poems I ever found was written at Meerut, three or four days before the Mutiny broke out there. The author complained that he could not get his clothes washed nicely that week, and was very facetious over his worries. [Illustration: SUNG TO THE BANJOES ROUND CAMP FIRES]