Indian Tales. Rudyard 1865-1936 Kipling

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       Rudyard Kipling

      Indian Tales

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664104793

Table of 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"

       Table of Contents

      "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