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"Well, you ought to take them to the guard tent, and not go wandering about the camp like this. Out of it, now!" Now Mr. Kipling had a pass from the Commander-in-Chief to go wherever he pleased in South Africa, and, besides that, he is Rudyard Kipling, whom private soldiers call their brother and father; so the situation was amusing.
"The first appearances of a young girl in modern society are said to be comparable with a 'Looking Over by the Pack, as described by Mr. Kipling. May Mrs. Baloo and Mrs. Bagheera and Mrs. Shere Khan have good hunting to-night, and be kind to-morrow to our womanling." "Why, Bake, you know just as well as I do there aren't any such people coming.
It is not a mere romance that calls it a land of magic, or even of black magic. Those who carry that atmosphere to us are not the romanticists but the realists. Every one can feel it in the work of Mr. Rudyard Kipling; and when I once remarked on his repulsive little masterpiece called "The Mark of the Beast," to a rather cynical Anglo-Indian officer, he observed moodily, "It's a beastly story.
And thus it is that when he writes of engineers, or sailors, or mules, or steam-engines, he writes at his best. The real poetry, the "true romance" which Mr. Kipling has taught, is the romance of the division of labour and the discipline of all the trades. He sings the arts of peace much more accurately than the arts of war. And his main contention is vital and valuable.
Our most offensive member is a little cad with a snub nose, who has read Kipling and imagines he is the nearest thing that ever has been to Private Ortheris. He goes about looking for the other two of the Soldiers Three; it is rather like an unpopular politician trying to form a ministry. And he is conscientiously foul-mouthed.
For instance, first there was Gilbert, and that gave us G; then came Kipling, and he gave us K; thus we get an algebraic formula, G.K., which are the initials of Chesterton, a still later arrival, and as the mind increases in despondency it sinks lower and lower down the alphabet until it comes to S, and thus we have Barn-yard Shaw, an improvement on the Kail-yard school, who takes the O pshaw view of life.
Probably some of our Territorials will wonder why he wants to see India particularly. They would gladly give him all of it. However, he is determined to go, and I cannot do less than wish him luck and a safe return. There are several places to which I should be glad to accompany him, but India is not one of them. Kipling ruined India for me, as I suspect he did for many other of his readers.
Of the many men who ran engines at the front, with me in the old days, I recall few whose lives were purposeless; almost every one had a life-story. If there's anything that I enjoy, it's to sit down to a pipe and a life-story told by the subject himself. How many have I listened to, out there, and every one of them worthy the pen of a Kipling!
She gave her a small, tissue wrapped parcel for her son and came out on to the steps again with her. "Be careful about crossing, Honor!" "Yes," said Honor, lightly. "That would hardly do, to come alone from Italy and then get myself run over on my own street. What's that Kipling thing Stepper quotes: To sail unscathed from a heathen land And be robbed on a Christian coast! Well, good-night, Mrs.
It was not now a case of sending soldiers, militia and yeomanry away in transports, and cheering them as they went. Not now, as Kipling too truly had said of the fight for South Africa: "When your strong men cheered in their millions, while your striplings went to the war."
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