ling told the tragic experience of two Anglo-Indian children when
separated from their parents. If it is true that this story is largely
autobiographical, the separation must have been a trying ordeal in
Kipling's childhood. Later he spent several years at Westward Ho,
Devonshire, in a school conducted mainly for the sons of Indian
officials. _Stalky and Co._, a broadly humorous book of schoolboy
life, gives the Kipling of this period, in the character of the
"egregious Beetle."

When only seventeen, he returned to India and immediately began
journalistic work. For seven years, first at Lahore and later at
Allahabad, he was busy with the usual hackwork of a small newspaper.
During these impressionable years, from seventeen to twenty-four, he
gained his intimate knowledge of the strangely-colored, many-sided
Indian life. His first stories and poems, often written in hot haste,
to fill the urgent need of more copy, appeared as waifs and strays in
the papers for which he wrote. A collection of verse, _Departmental
Ditties_, published at Lahore in 1886, was well received; and it was
quickly followed by several volumes of short stories. His ability thus
gained early recognition in India.

At the age of twenty-four, he left India for London. Here his books
found a publisher almost at once, and he was hailed as a new literary
genius. His work became so popular that he was able to devote his
whole time to writing. It is doubtful whether any writer since Dickens
has received such quick and enthusiastic recognition from all classes
of the English-speaking race. Even the street-car conductors were
heard quoting him.

In 1892 he married Miss Caroline Balestier, an American, and
afterwards lived for four years at Brattleboro, Vermont. Later he
settled in Sussex, England, whence he has made long journeys to South
Africa, Canada, and Egypt, amassing more knowledge of the English
"around the Seven Seas."

Probably the most remarkable feature of Kipling's career is the early
age at which his genius developed. Before he left India he had
published one book of verse and seven prose collections. By the time
he was thirty, he had written _The Jungle Books_, most of his best
short stories, and some of his finest verse.

Prose.--As a master of the modern short story, Kipling stands
unsurpassed. His journalistic work helped him to acquire a direct,
concentrated style of narrative, to find interest in an astonishing
variety of subjects,