wrath
of devils and put food in the beggar's bowl. There is, above all, the
simplicity of clean hunger, thirst, adventure, piety, friendliness and
love that threads the whole story of the Lama and his _Chela_.

_Kim_ is one of the few really beautiful stories in modern literature.
The brain and fancy of thousands of readers to-day are richer and
sweeter by that tale of the Master and his Friend of All the World. We
would not leave him and his Wheel of Things, the River he sought in
simple faith, the trust he had in the charity of men, the message that
bade him seek release in Nirvana from the importunity of life quaintly
warring with instinctive gestures of delight and sympathy with all that
made life precious--we would not leave this exquisite story so soon,
were it not that it brings forward the imperishable side of Mr
Kipling's work to which we shall have shortly to return. _Kim_ bridges
the gap between the Indian stories and The _Jungle Book_, which means
that _Kim_ is all but the top of Mr Kipling's achievement.

V

SOLDIERS THREE

Mr Kipling's three soldiers--Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd--are a
literary tradition. They are the Horatii and the Curatii, the three
Musketeers; Og, Gog and Magog; Captains Fluellin, Macmorris and Jamy;
Bardolph, Pistol and Nym. That Kipling's soldiers three are a literary
tradition is significant of their quality and rank as part of their
author's achievement. They belong rather to the efficient literary
workman who wrote the Simla tales than to the inspired author of the
Jungle books. Though we have run from the House of Suddhu to the
barrack-yard, we have not yet lost sight of Mr Kipling, decorator and
colourman in words. We shall find him conspicuously at work upon
Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd. Where, at first, he seems most closely
to rub sleeves with the raw stuff of life we shall find him most aloof,
most deliberately an artificer. Mr Kipling has seemed to the
judicious, who have duly grieved, to be in his soldier tales throwing
all crafty scruples to the winds in order that he may the more joyfully
indulge a natural genius for ferocity. Mr Kipling's soldiers are
regarded as an instance of his love for low company, of his readiness
to sacrifice aesthetic beauty to vulgar truth.

This is quite the wrong direction from which to approach Mr Kipling's
soldier tales. Mr Kipling's ferocity on paper is not to be explained
as the result of a natural delight in