Aberdeen herald. [volume] (Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.) 1886-1917, 1893-06-15
WITH PEN AND INK.


80 'ere's to you, tuzzy-W uzzy, OF youi
'ome in the Soudan
You're poor benighted 'eathen, but a
first-class fightin' man;
An 'ere's to you Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with
your 'ayrick 'ead of air
You big black bounding beggar-for YOU
broke a British square"
rang in ones ears like Mark Twain's ia
tai 'Punch with care", to the germs of
whose latent infection no prudent man
yet wantonly exposes himself, it was
even more impossible than at present to
seriously discuss the Ballads and Bar
rack-Room Ballads. Even now the
fascination OF jingle imparts charm
quite distinct from that of legitimate POI
etry, but none the less, momentarily, POI
tent To feel sure that this quality is
evanescent, one needs but to remember
the fate Of the equally fetching" Choir
us of Gllbert's "Yarn of the Nancy Bell'
or OF his clever topical songs in "Pa-
tience" and "The Pirates OF Penzanc ~
All the ballads are strongly marked
with the vigorous individuality of Rud-
yard Kipling but the faculty of swift and
effective condensation that is the most
striking merit of his short stories is Gu
riously lacking. 1.-THE Conundrum o.
the Workshops, whose witty first lines
have been quoted in this, and many an
other, column we give again for the sake
of illustrating this point
"When the flush of newborn sun fell
first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and
scratched with a stick in the mould,
And the first rude sketch that the world
had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the
leaves, It's pretty, but is it Art?'"
Five verses carrying the idea to fatigu-
ing length follow, to bring us to this
SIXTH
When the flicker of London sun falls
faint on the Club-room's green and gold
The sons of Adam sit them down and
scratch with their pens in the mould"
This is not near all, but surely enough
to convince anyone that though it's Kip
ling, its not Art. The heavy literal
ness of this is hard to credit to the au-
thor of, THE Gate of Hundred Sor-
rows,' Beyond the Pale" or any of the
score OF stories whose strength lies in
the reserve of mastery suggestion. Kip
ling has produced most of these rhymes
out of the exhuberance OF his youthful
spirits, and they bear about them the
exaggeration of boys nonsense. Prose
has been and will continue to be the nat.
ural medium of his serious work. There
haunts about the ballads the shades OF
other men,
"The eagle is screamin' around us, the
rivers a-moanin' below,
We're clear O. the pine an the oak scrub,
we're out on the rocks an the snow
Suggests Bret Harte's,- drifting,
above the pines the moon was slowly
The river sang below;
The dim sierias far beyond uplifting
Their minarets OF snow
The resemblance is not close but where
in Kipling's prose can we find one of any
sort?
To compare these ballads with the d.
verting foolery OF Gilbert or the nervy
snap OF Bret Harte is treating them with
no more levity than their author war
rants by what he writes OF their genesis,
Tor he does not make the mistake OF tax
ing himself seriously: in ''The Idler," he
says:-"Men in the army, and the Civil
Service, and the railway, wrote to me
saying that the rhymes might be made
into book. Some of them had been
sung to the banjoes around camp fires,
and some had run as far down-coast as
Rangoon and Moulmein, and up to Man
dalay. A real book was out of the ques-
ton, but knew that Runk-Din and the
office plant were at my disposal at a
price, if did not use the office time. So
there was built sort of a book, a lean
oblong docket, wire-stitched, to initiate
a d. o. Government envelope, print
ed on one side only, bound in brown pa
per, and secured with red tape. 1t was
addressed to all heads of departments
and all Government officials, and among
a pile OF papers would have deceived a
clerk OF twenty years service. OF these
"books" We made some hundreds; and
as there was no necessity for advertising,
my public being to NV hand, took re-
ply postcards, printed the news of the
birth of the book on one side, the blank
order form on the other, and posted
them up and down the empire from A.
den to Singapore, and from Quetta tc
Colombo. There was no trade discount
no reckoning twelves as thlrteens, nc
commission and no credit OF any kind
whatever. The money came back ii
poor but honest rupees, and was trans
ferred from the publisher, the left-hant
pocket, to the author, the right-hant
pocket. Every copy sold in few weeks
and the ratio of expenses to profits, as
remember it, has since prevented my in
juring my health by sympathizing Will
publishers who talk of their risks ant
advertisements. The down-country pa
pers complained OF the form OF tn,
thing. The wire binding cut the pages
and the red tape tore the covers. Thi
Il y