Commonplace book - Kipling, AOTF

Arithmetic on the Frontier

A great and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe--
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."

Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in "villainous saltpetre!"
And after--ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station--
A canter down some dark defile--
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail--
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares--shoot straight who can--
The odds are on the cheaper man.

One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.

The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap--alas! as we are dear.

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Job

I've spent my life in working hours doing a consistent, capable, thoughtful first draft and passing it to bosses with the literacy of Barbary apes so that they can rip out bits, daub shit on other parts to indicate 'put in something else there', and in general degrade my work to the frankly embarassing. It doesn't pay badly, but it is humiliating.

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Bill

OK, this is just a placeholder until I check it out. The CIA seems to have killed my uncle.

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Tertullian on Shaving

Nor may men destroy the hair of their beards, and unnaturally change the form of a man. For the law says: "Ye shall not mar your beards."²² For God the Creator has made this decent for women, but has determined that it is unsuitable for men. But if thou do these things to please men, in contradiction to the law, thou wilt be abominable with God, who created thee after His own image. If, therefore, thou wilt be acceptable to God, abstain from all those things which He hates, and do none of those things that are unpleasing to Him.

No, that's a different Father. I see Cyprian feels the same way:

And although it is written, "Ye shall not mar the figure of your beard,"⁶⁶ he plucks out his beard, and dresses his hair; and does he now study to please any one who displeases God?

(Treatise III, on the lapsed - my, is a find!)

Commonplace book

I to my perils

Of cheat and charmer

Came clad in armour

By stars benign.

Hope lies to mortals

And most believe her,

But man’s deceiver

Was never mine.

The thoughts of others

Were light and fleeting,

Of lovers’ meeting

Or luck or fame.

Mine were of trouble,

And mine were steady,

So I was ready

When trouble came.


A E Housman

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Evangelical conspiracy

I think people are missing the Sydney C of E diocese's purpose in all this homosexual marriage stuff. The Sydney diocese is hovering on the verge of schism though allowing the laity to administer the eucharist; they would have done it already except that if they broke on that issue they might be regarded by the courts as having exited from the body of the church and so would be sued to hand over their vast Church property. If they can drive the other side into introducing an innovation first then they can claim that the women-ordaining lot split from them, thus keeping the moolah; and once they are all the c of E in A there is then they can change doctrine as it suits them.

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Headscarves on Australians

On the train today sitting across from two headscarved schoolgirls chatting -
"So she went arabic arabic arabic and I went, like arabic arabic arabic whatever, she's just so arabic arabic arabic..." Good progress there. It's hard to conceive of anybody being fanatical in teenese. It's Australia's mission to gather in all these evangelicals and secularise them.


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