you go on playing
tricks like that you'll spoil all its teeth and get laid up
with mental indigestion. You must have nothing but the
plainest reading for the next few days. Take care, now! No
novels on any account!"

KIPLING'S ANALYSIS OF TRUE LITERATURE.

The Masterless Man With the Magic of
the Necessary Words, and the
Record of the Tribe.

At the anniversary banquet of the Royal Academy, in London, May 5, Rudyard
Kipling responded to the toast of "Literature." In that lean English of
his, with all its evidence of fine condition, he made plain, as he
understands it, the meaning of literature and its relation to life. It is
the story of the tribe, told, not by the men of action, who are dumb, but
by the masterless men who possess the magic of the necessary words.

We quote the address from the London _Times_:

There is an ancient legend which tells us that when a man
first achieved a most notable deed he wished to explain to
his tribe what he had done. As soon as he began to speak,
however, he was smitten with dumbness, he lacked words, and
sat down.

Then there arose--according to the story--a masterless man,
one who had taken no part in the action of his fellow, who
had no special virtues, but afflicted--that is the
phrase--with the magic of the necessary words. He saw, he
told, he described the merits of the notable deed in such a
fashion, we are assured, that the words "became alive and
walked up and down in the hearts of all his hearers."

Thereupon the tribe, seeing that the words were certainly
alive, and fearing lest the man with the words would hand
down untrue tales about them to their children, took and
killed him. But later they saw that the magic was in the
words, not in the man.

We have progressed in many directions since the time of this
early and destructive criticism, but so far we do not seem
to have found a sufficient substitute for the necessary word
as the final record to which all achievement must look.

Even to-day, when all is done, those who have done it must
wait until all has been said by the masterless man with the
words. It is certain that the overwhelming bulk of those
words will perish in the future as they have perished in the
past; it is true that a minute fraction will continue to
exist, and by the light of these words, and by that light