Funny / Rudyard Kipling

• 'A Code of Morals'
  • "The General swore. Was ever General Officer addressed as 'dear' before?"
  • a Moment of Awesome for General Bangs, who never took revenge on the heliographing Jones: "All honour unto Bangs, for ne'er did Jones thereafter know/ By word or act official who read off that helio."
• In "The Ballad of Boh Da Thone":
  • A Hindu bureaucrat describes his killing the title character as "by High Education brought pressure to bear." In fact, the obese clerk accidentally fell on top of the poor bandit prince:
    And twenty stone from a height discharged
    Are bad for a Boh with a spleen enlarged.
  • "So you kept that jade earring!"
• "The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat." All of it, but especially the closing scene in which the entire House of Commons breaks into the title song. And the Irish. Dear God, the Irish.
  When they weakened for an instant, Ireland would yell: "Are ye with me, bhoys?" and they all renewed their strength like Antaeus.
• His letter to a magazine that accidentally reported his death before he actually died:
  I've just read that I am dead. Don't forget to delete me from your list of subscribers.

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