Page:In Black and White - Kipling (1890).djvu/101



To My Most Deare Father,

I was in your House and we went abroade together, in the outskirtes of the Citie, among the Gentoo Wrestlours, you had poynted me how in all Empryzes he gooing forth flang backe alwaies a Word to hym that had instruct hym in his Crafte to the better Sneckynge of a Victorie or at the leaste the auoidance of anie greate Defeate: And presentlie each man wolde run to his Vstad (which is as we shoulde say Master) and geat such as he deserued of Admoneshment Reprouf and Council, concernynge the Gripp, the Houlde, Cross-buttock and Fall, and then lay to afreshe.

In lyke maner I, drawynge back a lytel, from this my Rabble and Encompasment of Labour, have runn asyde to you who were euer my Vstad and Speake as it were in your priuie Eare [yet that others may knowe] that if I have here done aught of Faire Craft and Reverentiall it is come from your hande as trewly [but by i. Degree remouen] as though it had been the coperture of thys Booke that you haue made for me in loue. How may I here tell of that Tender Diligence which in my wauerynge and inconstante viages was in all tymes about me to showe the Passions and Occasions, Shifts, Humours, and Sports that in due proporcion combinate haue bred that Rare and Terrible Mystery the which, for lacke of a more compleat Vnderstandinge, the Worlde has cauled Man: aswel the maner in which you shoulde goo about to pourtraie the same, a lytel at a tyme in Feare and Decencie. By what hand, when I wolde have dabbled a Greene and unused Pen in all Earthe Heauen and Hell, bicause of the pitiful Confidence of Youthe, was I bounde in and restrict to wayte tyl I coulde in some sort discerne from the Shadowe, that is not by any peynes to be toucht, the small Kernel and Substance that mighte conforme to the sclenderness of my Capacitie. All thys and other Council