The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-06-30

 tures-Mahbub Ali, I think, was his name-who regarded Kipling as man apart from all other "SahibS." After each of his wanderings across the un- cxpored fringes of Afghanistan, where his restless spirit of adventure led him, Mahbub Ali always used to turn up, travel-stained, dirtier and more majes- tic than ever, for confidential colloquy with "Euppeleen Sahib," his friend" and I more than fancy that to Mahbub Ali Kipling owed the wonderful local color which he was able to put into the story of The Man who Would Be a King
 And Mahbub Alipeace to his ashes was only one link in the strange chain of associations that Kipling riv- eted around himself in India. No half note in the wide gamut of native ideas and custom was unfamiliar to him; just as he had left no phase of white life in India unexplored. He knew the under current of the sodiers' thoughts, in the white-washed barracks on the sum- burnt plain of Milan Mir better than sergeant or chaplain. No father con- lessor penetrated more deeply into the thoughts of fair but frail humanity than Kipling, when the frivolous socie- ty of Anglo-India formed the object of his inquiries The railway folk,' that queer colony of white, half-White and three-quarters black which remains an uncared-for and discreditable excres- cence upon British rule in India, seemed to have unburdened their souls To ttN1i af hni c,ypNy thpi1> poor pride and their hopes. Some of the best of Kipling's work is drawn from the lives of these people, although to the ordinary Anglo-Indian, whose social caste restrictions are almost more memorable than those of the Hin doc whom he affects to despise on that account, they are as sealed book. Sometimes, taking a higher flight Kip ling has made viceroys and command ers-in-chie members of council and secretaries of government his theme, and the flashes of light that he has thrown upon the inner workings of the machinery of government in India have been recognized as too truly col ored to be intuitive or aught but the light of knowledge reflected from the actual facts. No writer, for instance, could have excited as Kipling did, Lord Dufferins $ curiosity as to how the inmost councils of the state had thus been photographed, without having somehow or other caught glimpse of things as they were for at least one moment II is this which is the strongest attribute of Kipling's mind; that it photographs, as it were, every detail of passing scenes that can have any future utility for literary reference or allusion. He was able, however he might be engaged, to make mental eX- cursions of various kinds. still pursu ing the even tenor of the business in hand
 In sporting matters, for instance, l suppose. nothing is more difficult than for man who is no 'sportsman'-in the exclusive sense of the men who carry the scent of the stables and the sawdust of the ring with them wher- ever they go-to speak to these in their own language, along their own lines of thought Of a novelist who writes good sporting story, it is considered praise to say that none but real sportsman could have written it." But Kipling was no sportsman and 4n in different horseman; yet bis sporting verses always took the sporting world in India (where' sport takes precedence of almost every other form of human activity) by storm.
 It was to Kipling's powers of satire, indeed, that his early fame in India was mainly due. The poems that made up his Departmental Duties" were personal and topical in their ori- gin, and gained tenfold in force for readers who could supply the names and places. There have been pavids and Uriahs in all ages and countries, and the poem Jack Barrett Went to Ountta" may be taken as applicable to aI;. T;ut those who had known the real Jack Barrett good fellow that he was, and the vile superior and faith less wife who sent him lon duty to his death, felt the heat of the spirit which inspired Kipling's verse in a way that gave those few lines an inn perishable force Jack Barrett" was the type of Kipling's most successful earlier verse. His short stories of friv- olous Anglo-Tndian society are equally true to life. The light-hearted, or rather heartless, amours of Simla must have been witnessed at close range if one would thoroughly appreciate Kip
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