Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/99

Rh thought, is an artist, is a writer'—to be able to go and say this, and to advance reasons for our belief in it of sufficient cogency to extort, perhaps, from our friends a genuine assent. If for this alone, we ought to be grateful to Mr. Rudyard Kipling, our Anglo-Indian story-teller.

From the very beginning, Mr. Kipling struck a strong and solemn personal note. To his first booklet, Soldiers Three, a collection of seven 'stories of barrack-room life,' and designed to 'illustrate' one of 'the four main features of Anglo-Indian life,' viz. the military, he attached the following sombre, proud, and yet pitiful envoi:

And they were stronger hands than mine That digged the ruby from the earth— More cunning brains that made it worth The large desire of a king; And bolder hearts that thro' the brine Went down the Perfect Pearl to bring.

Lo, I have wrought in common clay Rude figures of a rough-hewn race; For Pearls strew not the market-place In this my town of banishment Where with the shifting dust I play, And eat the bread of Discontent.