Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 13 December 1886.

Attribution: In Scrapbook 3 (28/3, pp. 60–1).

Text: Civil and Military Gazette.

Notes: The story is no. 14 of the newspaper series called ‘Plain Tales from the Hills’, but was omitted when most of the series was collected in book form under the same title in 1888. RK perhaps omitted it on account of its double structure – two stories rather than one. It is otherwise very much in keeping with many of the collected Plain Tales.

In ‘Quo Fata Vocant’, the reminiscence that RK wrote for the St George's Gazette, 31 December 1902, the magazine of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, he recalls the elements of the first part of ‘A Scrap of Paper’ as though they had actually happened: ‘Do they [any regiment that succeeded the Fusiliers at Lahore] know a “writer” when they see him, and can they make that “writer” happy and contented down by the elephant lines?’

Reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets and in Harbord, iii, 1558–62.

Some men ought to be hanged – especially London Tradesmen. They never seem to understand when to leave you alone; and they never realize that, in this country, you have quite enough expenses of your own, without attending to their claims.

Every one who has dealt with them knows what an unpleasant firm Rentoul and Brannigan are. They have no sense of common decency, and if you lie on their books for more than eighteen months at a stretch, they send you first a letter on thin white paper, then another letter on thick blue paper; and lastly they send a writ. Writs are unpleasant things; even in so quiet a part of the world as Assam. They begin with lions and unicorns, like the first stage of delirium tremens, and then go on to “all whom it may concern;” and finish up with “wherefores” and “therebys.” The general effect is depressing – distinctly so. But, as I may have said elsewhere, it takes a good deal to depress a Subaltern of the Line, and when Chubbuck got first the white paper, and next the blue, like a seidlitz powder, he knew what was in store for him, and told the rest of the “Inextinguishables” that a writ was in the air.