Banghy Parcels

A flash! A puff of smoke! A crash, A general smash! Doors splinter'd: windows broke: A roof uplifted, clean and neat, Some fifty or sixty feet: Walls falling: Men running, or sprawling: An occasional, subsequent rumbling Of brickbats promiscuously tumbling: A crying, and calling, A squalling and bawling,— Don't think this, pray, Any thing strange, or appalling,— I assure you, it's quite in our usual way!

For it chanced to-day, As we were returning From Church, where the Rev. Dhoney, M.A., Had discours'd with solemnity, unction, and learning Of death and the tomb, And demons and doom, And the final universal burning, That straight in front of our faces, Not distant three hundred paces, We saw that sudden flare, That roof in the air, And those brickbats falling, like stars, in various places.

My friends in England, had you seen This strange little sight, You'd have certainly been In a pretty fright, And have thought, I ween, As you saw the flash and heard the report, That someone, who had his cigar alight, Had walked into our powder-magazine. No, no—I assure you, no! 'Twas nothing of the sort! Again I say, The explosion was quite in the usual way,— A thing we've got used to long ago!

The occurrence was simple. 'Twas merely this. A parcel arrived at the Post Office,— A Banghy Parcel, marked, WITH CARE (In our Indian slang Banghy means, It is apt to bang!) Well, bang it went! And sent the Post Office, roof and wall, Door, and window, and postmen, and all, Here, and there, and everywhere! 'Twas a "bearing parcel:" it bore some Of the very finest Petroleum,— A sample sent For experiment By a Firm to a scientific gent. —Well, well, my friends, I need hardly say Explosions are blessings in their own way. When one occurs, it is one of its tricks To knock a few postmen up with the bricks, Thus, in the Postal Service, you know, Promotion is never very slow: Some get promoted to heavenly bliss, And some, on earth, in the Post Office. —And then, Over the graves of the dead postmen, Consider what epitaphs one might pen! You might write o'er the stone—

"Dear Reader, who passest by, For the Postman's body that lies below, Drop not a tear, nor sigh, Nor sob, nor moan, For his soul did go, from this world or woe, By Banghy-post, straight to the sky!"