hat he looked like in half a minute....

"Among Kipling's early journalistic experiences was his involuntary
assumption 'for this occasion only' of the role of the fighting
editor. He was essentially a man of peace, and would always prefer
making an angry man laugh to fighting with him; but one day there
called at the office a very furious photographer. What the paper may
have said about him or his photographs has been forgotten, but never
will those who witnessed it forget the rough-and-tumble all over the
floor in which he and Kipling indulged. The libel, or whatever it was,
which had infuriated the photographer was not Kipling's work, but the
quarrel was forced upon him, and although he was handicapped by his
spectacles and smaller stature he made a very fine draw of it, and
then the photographer--who, it may be remarked, was very drunk--was
ejected. And Kipling wiped his glasses and buttoned his collar.

"That trick of wiping his spectacles is one which Kipling indulged
more frequently than any man I have ever met, for the simple reason
that he was always laughing; and when you laugh till you nearly cry
your spectacles get misty. Kipling, shaking all over with laughter,
and wiping his spectacles at the same time with his handkerchief, is
the picture which always comes to mind as most characteristic of him
in the old days."

With regard to Kipling's minute and exact knowledge of details Mr.
Robinson has this to say:

"To learn to write as soldiers think, he spent long hours loafing with
the genuine article. He watched them at work and at play and at prayer
from the points of view of all his confidants--the combatant officer,
the doctor, the chaplain, the drill sergeant, and the private himself.
With the navy, with every branch of sport, and with natural history,
he has never wearied in seeking to learn all that man may learn at
first-hand, or the very best second-hand, at any rate.... But most
wonderful was his insight into the strangely mixed manners of life and
thought of the natives of India. He knew them all through their
horizontal divisions of rank and their vertical sections of caste;
their ramifications of race and blood; their antagonisms and blendings
of creed; their hereditary strains of calling or handicraft. Show him
a native, and he would tell you his rank, caste, race, origin,
habitat, creed, and calling. He would speak to the man in his own
fashion, using familiar, homely figures, which brightened