Sunday Kipling

A very good Sunday to you all. I hope you are all safe and sound. Weather for an awful lot of you has been...well, awful. Be careful out there.

Lu's birthday was fine and she wanted me to make sure you all know how much she treasured all your well wishes. And she never once threatened me with a blunt object. Well, maybe just once. She had a ball at the range and even ran Stage 5 twice. The only problem is now she's started eyeballing my new rifle. I foresee another addition to the gun safe in the near future.

Scheduled for the coming week is a more in depth look at the new DPMS 3G2 and some tests and thoughts on gun lubrication. I did try the new stuff I got but I have mixed feelings. I'm also shopping for a 3 Gun cart though I may build one. Next match is the last Saturday in February. I think it's a 2 Gun but we'll see.

Six

Something 18th century humorous today I think. 

The Post That Fitted

 Though tangled and twisted the course of true love
  This ditty explains,
  No tangle's so tangled it cannot improve
  If the Lover has brains.

Ere the seamer bore him Eastward, Sleary was engaged to marry
An attractive girl at Tunbridge, whom he called "my little Carrie."
Sleary's pay was very modest; Sleary was the other way.
Who can cook a two-plate dinner on eight poor rupees a day?

Long he pondered o'er the question in his scantly furnished quarters --
Then proposed to Minnie Boffkin, eldest of Judge Boffkin's daughters.
Certainly an impecunious Subaltern was not a catch,
But the Boffkins knew that Minnie mightn't make another match.

So they recognised the business and, to feed and clothe the bride,
Got him made a Something Something somewhere on the Bombay side.
Anyhow, the billet carried pay enough for him to marry --
As the artless Sleary put it: -- "Just the thing for me and Carrie."

Did he, therefore, jilt Miss Boffkin -- impulse of a baser mind?
No! He started epileptic fits of an appalling kind.
[Of his modus operandi only this much I could gather: --
"Pears's shaving sticks will give you little taste and lots of lather."]

Frequently in public places his affliction used to smite
Sleary with distressing vigour -- always in the Boffkins' sight.
Ere a week was over Minnie weepingly returned his ring,
Told him his "unhappy weakness" stopped all thought of marrying.

Sleary bore the information with a chastened holy joy, --
Epileptic fits don't matter in Political employ, --
Wired three short words to Carrie -- took his ticket, packed his kit --
Bade farewell to Minnie Boffkin in one last, long, lingering fit.

Four weeks later, Carrie Sleary read -- and laughed until she wept --
Mrs. Boffkin's warning letter on the "wretched epilept." . . .
Year by year, in pious patience, vengeful Mrs. Boffkin sits
Waiting for the Sleary babies to develop Sleary's fits.