The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-12-11
INDIA BOUGHT HIS FIRST BOOK.
He Burned Twice rs Many Verses ~
Were Published-The Once Fore.
man an Early Admirer.
Copyright, 1892, BY Rudyard Kipliur.

Were about me and beneath me and above.
Then rival tof solutre) told the tribe my style
was oatre:
cNeath hammer. grooved, of dolomite, he
fell
And left my views of Art, barbed and Hanged
beneath the heart
OF a mammothtstic poet at Grenelle.
SO stripped them scalp from skull, and my
hunting dogs fed full,
And their teeth 1 threaded neatly on thong,
that they are dead.
For know my work was right. and theirs was
wrong"
But my Totem saw the shame, from his ridge
pole shrine he came,
And he told me in vision of the night:
ihe,s are nine sixty ways OF constructing
And every single one of them is right"
Still they skirmish to and fro, men warred with
When we headed of the Aurocks turn for
When the rich Allobrogenses never kept aman.
And our only plots were piled in lakes at
Berne.
STILL cultured Christisn age sees US scufie.
squeai and rage,
Still we pinch ana slap and jabber, scratch
Still We let business slide (as we dropped the
half-dressed hidel
q
Still. the world is wondrous Iarge-seven seas
from marge to marge-
And 1t holds vast OF various kinds of man;
And the widest dreams of Kew are the facts of
khatmandoo,
And the crimes of Chaplain chaste in Marta
ban.
Here's my wisdom for your use, as learned it
when the moose
And the reindeer roared where Paris roars to-
night:
There are nine and-sixty ways of constructing
And erery single one Of them is right
AS there is only one man in charge of
steamer, so there is but one man in charge
of a newspaper, and he is the editor. NV
chief taught me this on an Indian journal,
and he further explained that an order
was an order, to be obeyed at a run, not a
walk, and that any notion or notions as to
the fitness or unfitness of any particular
klnk OF work for the young had better be
held over till the last page was locked up
to press. He was breaking me into har-
ness, and owe him deep deh: Of graft
tude, which did not discharge at the time.
The path OF virtue was very steep, whereas
the writing of verses allowed a certain plav
to the mind, and, unlike the filling in of
reading matter, could be done as the spirit
served. Now sub-editor is not hired to
write verses. He is paid to sub-edit. At
the time this discovery shocked me greatly:
but, some years later, when I came to be
an editor In charge, providence dealt me
for my subordinate one saturated with
Ella. He wrote very pretty, lamblike es-
says, but he wrote them when he should
have been sub-editing. Then l saw little
what my chief must have suffered on my
account. There is moral here for the
ambitious and aspiring who are oppressed
by their superIors.
This is DEPRESSION. but all my verses
were digressions from office work. They
came without invitation unm anneredly, in
the nature of things: but they had to come
and the writing out of them kept me
healthy and amused. To the best of nv
remembrance no one had discovered their
grievous cynicism or their pessimistic ten
dency, and l was far too busy and too
happy to take thought about these things
So they arrived merrily, being born out
of the life about me, and they were very
bad indeed, and the JOY of doing them was
payment thousand times their worth.
Some, of course, came and ran away again,
and the dear sorrow of going in search of
these out of office hours and catching
them, was almost better than writing them
clear. Bad as they were, | burned twice
as many as were published, and of the
survivors at least two-thirds were cut
down at the last moment. Nothing can
be wholly beautiful that is not useful,
and, therefore, my verses were used to
ease off the perpetual strife between the
manager extending his advertisements
and the chief sighting for his reading mat
ter. They were made to be sacrificed
RuknDin, the foreman of our side, APP
80 i.N,x, aaix 10
Muslin of culture. He would say:
"Iour poetry very good. sir; just coming
proper length today. You giving more
soon? one-third column just proper. AL
ways can take on third page"
Mahmad, who set them up, had an UNI
pleasant way of reference to a new lyric
as "Ek Gur chi="-one more thing which |
never liked. The job side, too, were I'M
sympathetic. because / used to raid into
their type for private proofs, with old
English and Gothic headlines. Even a
Hlndoo does not like to find The serifs of
his rs cut away 10 make long SIS.
And In this manner, week by week, nv
verses came to DE printed in the paper. I
was in very good company, for there is
always an undercurrent OF song, little
bitter for the most part. running through
the Indian papers. The bulk OF it is much
better than mine, being more graceful, and
is done by those less than SIR Alfred
LNdii, 10 hEtAAl pOsORiLf ipl IiltIl-
tioning his name in this gallery-"Pekin,"
"Latakia" Cigarette" 20" IT. W."
Foresight" and Others" whose names
come up with the stars out of the Indian
ocean going eastward.
Sometimes man in Bangalore would
be moved 10 song. and a man on the Bonn
bay side would answer him, and man in
Bengal would echo back. till al last We
would all be Growing together like cocks
before daybreak. when il is too dark TO see
your fellow, And. occasionally. some UNI
happy Chaa-SZee, away III the China ports,
would lift up his voice among the tea
chests. and the queer-smelling yellow
papers of the far East brought US the re-
suit. The newspaper files showed that,
forty years ago. the men sang of Just the
same subjects as We dld-of heat, l0neli-
ness love, lack Of promotion, poverty,
sport ana war. Further back still. at the
end Of the eighteenth century. Hickey's
BsAqcl GGzette, very wicked little sheet
in Calcutta, published the songs OF the
Young factors, enSigns, and writer's 10 the
Fast India Company. They, TOO. wrote
OF the same things, bat in those days
men were strong enough TO buy bull
ock's heart Tor dinner, cook IL with their
own hands, because they could no: afford
a servant, and III axe q rhymed Jest OF all
the squalor and poverty. Lives We're not
worth two monsoons' purchase. and per-
hsps the knowledge OF this little colored
the rhymes when they sang:
IN a very short time Won re released from all