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Indian Tales By: Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) |
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INDIAN TALES BY RUDYARD KIPLING CONTENTS "The Finest Story in the World" With the Main Guard Wee Willie Winkie The Rout of the White Hussars At Twenty two The Courting of Dinah Shadd The Story of Muhammad Din In Flood Time My Own True Ghost Story The Big Drunk Draf' By Word of Mouth The Drums of the Fore and Aft The Sending of Dana Da On the City Wall The Broken link Handicap On Greenhow Hill To Be Filed for Reference The Man Who Would Be King The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney His Majesty the King The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes In the House of Suddhoo Black Jack The Taking of Lungtungpen The Phantom Rickshaw On the Strength of a Likeness Private Learoyd's Story Wressley of the Foreign Office The Solid Muldoon The Three Musketeers Beyond the Pale The God from the Machine The Daughter of the Regiment The Madness of Private Ortheris L'Envoi "THE FINEST STORY IN THE WORLD" "Or ever the knightly years were gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was a king in Babylon
And you were a Christian slave,"
W.E. Henley . His name was Charlie Mears; he was the only son of his mother who was a
widow, and he lived in the north of London, coming into the City every day
to work in a bank. He was twenty years old and suffered from aspirations.
I met him in a public billiard saloon where the marker called him by his
given name, and he called the marker "Bullseyes." Charlie explained, a
little nervously, that he had only come to the place to look on, and since
looking on at games of skill is not a cheap amusement for the young, I
suggested that Charlie should go back to his mother. That was our first step toward better acquaintance. He would call on me
sometimes in the evenings instead of running about London with his
fellow clerks; and before long, speaking of himself as a young man must,
he told me of his aspirations, which were all literary. He desired to make
himself an undying name chiefly through verse, though he was not above
sending stories of love and death to the drop a penny in the slot
journals. It was my fate to sit still while Charlie read me poems of many
hundred lines, and bulky fragments of plays that would surely shake the
world. My reward was his unreserved confidence, and the self revelations
and troubles of a young man are almost as holy as those of a maiden.
Charlie had never fallen in love, but was anxious to do so on the first
opportunity; he believed in all things good and all things honorable, but,
at the same time, was curiously careful to let me see that he knew his way
about the world as befitted a bank clerk on twenty five shillings a week.
He rhymed "dove" with "love" and "moon" with "June," and devoutly believed
that they had never so been rhymed before. The long lame gaps in his plays
he filled up with hasty words of apology and description and swept on,
seeing all that he intended to do so clearly that he esteemed it already
done, and turned to me for applause. I fancy that his mother did not encourage his aspirations, and I know that
his writing table at home was the edge of his washstand. This he told me
almost at the outset of our acquaintance; when he was ravaging my
bookshelves, and a little before I was implored to speak the truth as to
his chances of "writing something really great, you know." Maybe I
encouraged him too much, for, one night, he called on me, his eyes flaming
with excitement, and said breathlessly: "Do you mind can you let me stay here and write all this evening? I won't
interrupt you, I won't really. There's no place for me to write in at my
mother's." "What's the trouble?" I said, knowing well what that trouble was. "I've a notion in my head that would make the most splendid story that was
ever written. Do let me write it out here. It's such a notion!" There was no resisting the appeal... Continue reading book >>
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Genres for this book |
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Fiction |
Literature |
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Wikipedia – Indian Tales |
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