Rudyard Kipling Quotes

“Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path.”

“What is it? What is it? . . . Am I dying, Bagheera?” “No, Little Brother. Those are only tears such as men use.”

“To kill a naked cub is shame. Besides, he may make better sport for you when he is grown.”

“Ye have told me so often to-night that I am a man (though indeed I would have been a wolf with you to my life’s end) that I feel your words are true.”

“Now the Law of the Jungle lays down that if there is any dispute as to the right of a cub to be accepted by the Pack, he must be spoken for by at least two members of the Pack who are not his father and mother.”

“When a leader of the Pack has missed his kill, he is called the Dead Wolf as long as he lives, which is not long, as a rule.”

“And it is I, Raksha [the Demon], who answer. The man’s cub is mine, Lungri—mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with the Pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs—frog-eater—fish-killer, he shall hunt thee!”

“Many of the wolves that looked thee over when thou wast brought to the Council first are old too, and the young wolves believe, as Shere Khan has taught them, that a man-cub has no place with the Pack.”

“Now, don’t be angry after you’ve been afraid. That’s the worst kind of cowardice.”

“What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give tongue.”

“One of the beauties of Jungle Law is that punishment settles all scores. There is no nagging afterward.”

“The air was full of all the night noises that, taken together, make one big silence.”

“Ay, roar well,” said Bagheera, under his whiskers; “for the time comes when this naked thing will make thee roar to another tune, or I know nothing of Man.”

“And what is a man that he should not run with his brothers? I was born in the jungle; I have obeyed the Law of the Jungle; and there is no wolf of ours from whose paws I have not pulled a thorn. Surely they are my brothers!”

“My heart is heavy with the things that I do not understand.”

“All the jungle is thine, and thou canst kill everything that thou art strong enough to kill; but for the sake of the bull that bought thee thou must never kill or eat any cattle young or old. That is the Law of the Jungle.”

“By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in the jungle will call fire by its proper name. Every beast lives in deadly fear of it, and invents a hundred ways of describing it.”

“And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think of except things to eat.”

“To each his own fear.”

“The man’s cub—the man’s cub? I speak for the man’s cub. There is no harm in a man’s cub. I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth. Let him run with the Pack, and be entered with the others. I myself will teach him.”

“Men and their cubs are very wise. He may be a help in time.”

“The jungle is shut to me, and I must forget your talk and your companionship; but I will be more merciful than ye are. Because I was all but your brother in blood, I promise that when I am a man among men I will not betray ye to men as ye have betrayed me.”

“The reason the beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest and most defenseless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him.”

Akela said nothing. He was thinking of the time that comes to every leader of every pack when his strength goes from him and he gets feebler and feebler, till at last he is killed by the wolves and a new leader comes up—to be killed in his turn.

“Sorrow never stays punishment. But remember, Bagheera, he is very little.”

“Remember, Bagheera loved thee,” he cried, and bounded away. At the foot of the hill he cried again long and loud, “Good hunting on a new trail, Master of the Jungle! Remember, Bagheera loved thee.”

“Yes, I too was born among men. I had never seen the jungle. They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I felt that I was Bagheera - the Panther - and no man’s plaything, and I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw and came away; and because I had learned the ways of men, I became more terrible in the jungle than Shere Khan.”

″‘What is this?’ said the Leopard, ‘that is so ‘sclusively dark, and yet so full of little pieces of light.‘”

“How wise are little children who see and are silent!”

“How wise are little children who speak truth!”

“The camel’s hump is an ugly lump, Which well you may see at the Zoo; But uglier yet is the hump we get From having too little to do.”

“The Man went to sleep in front of the fire ever so happy; but the Woman sat up, combing her hair. She took the bone of the shoulder of mutton - the big fat blade bone - and she looked at the wonderful marks on it, and she threw more wood on the fire, and she made a Magic. She made the first Singing Magic in the world.”

“But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.”

“Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn’t even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways.”

″...and when the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone.”

“I keep six honest serving-men; (They taught me all I knew) Their names are What and Where and When And How and Why and Who.”

Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves.

And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world.

“Enter, then, and look,” said Father Wolf stiffly, “but there is no food here.”

“but for so mean a person as myself a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log [the jackal people], to pick and choose?”

“All thanks for this good meal,”

“How beautiful are the noble children!

I might have remembered that the children of kings are men from the beginning.”

“Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting grounds. He will hunt among these hills for the next moon, so he has told me.”

“His mother did not call him Lungri [the Lame One] for nothing,” said Mother Wolf quietly.

“Shall I tell him of your gratitude?”

“Out and hunt with thy master. Thou hast done harm enough for one night.”

“Ye can hear Shere Khan below in the thickets. I might have saved myself the message.”

“The fool!” said Father Wolf.

“Faugh! Are there not enough beetles and frogs in the tanks that he must eat Man, and on our ground too!”

“The fool has had no more sense than to jump at a woodcutter’s campfire, and has burned his feet,”

“Is that a man’s cub?” said Mother Wolf. “I have never seen one. Bring it here.”

“How little! How naked, and—how bold!”

“He is altogether without hair, and I could kill him with a touch of my foot.”

“But see, he looks up and is not afraid.”

“My lord, my lord, it went in here!”

“Shere Khan does us great honor,” said Father Wolf, but his eyes were very angry.

“The Wolves are a free people,” said Father Wolf.

“Ye choose and ye do not choose! What talk is this of choosing? By the bull that I killed, am I to stand nosing into your dog’s den for my fair dues? It is I, Shere Khan, who speak!”

“And it is I, Raksha [The Demon], who answers. The man’s cub is mine, Lungri—mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with the Pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs—frog-eater—fish-killer—he shall hunt thee!

Now get hence, or by the Sambhur that I killed (I eat no starved cattle), back thou goest to thy mother, burned beast of the jungle, lamer than ever thou camest into the world! Go!”

“Each dog barks in his own yard!

The cub is mine, and to my teeth he will come in the end, O bush-tailed thieves!”

“He came naked, by night, alone and very hungry; yet he was not afraid!

And that lame butcher would have killed him and would have run off to the Waingunga while the villagers here hunted through all our lairs in revenge!

Keep him? Assuredly I will keep him.

Lie still, little frog.

O thou Mowgli—for Mowgli the Frog I will call thee—the time will come when thou wilt hunt Shere Khan as he has hunted thee.

“Ye know the Law—ye know the Law. Look well, O Wolves!”

“The cub is mine. Give him to me. What have the Free People to do with a man’s cub?”

“What have the Free People to do with a man’s cub?”

“Ah, but what about the Law of the Jungle?”

“I speak for the man’s cub. There is no harm in a man’s cub. I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth. Let him run with the Pack, and be entered with the others. I myself will teach him.”

“Listen to Bagheera. The cub can be bought for a price. It is the Law.”

“Knowing that I have no right to speak here, I ask your leave.”

“To kill a naked cub is shame. Besides, he may make better sport for you when he is grown. Baloo has spoken in his behalf. Now to Baloo’s word I will add one bull, and a fat one, newly killed, not half a mile from here, if ye will accept the man’s cub according to the Law. Is it difficult?”

“What matter? He will die in the winter rains. He will scorch in the sun. What harm can a naked frog do us? Let him run with the Pack. Where is the bull, Bagheera? Let him be accepted.”

“Men and their cubs are very wise.”

“for the time will come when this naked thing will make thee roar to another tune, or I know nothing of man.”

“He may be a help in time.”

“Take him away,” he said to Father Wolf, “and train him as befits one of the Free People.”

“Come along, Little Brother.”

“I have the Pack and I have thee; and Baloo, though he is so lazy, might strike a blow or two for my sake. Why should I be afraid?”

“Little Brother, how often have I told thee that Shere Khan is thy enemy?”

“But this is no time for sleeping. Baloo knows it; I know it; the Pack know it; and even the foolish, foolish deer know. Tabaqui has told thee too.”

“Tabaqui came to me not long ago with some rude talk that I was a naked man’s cub and not fit to dig pig-nuts. But I caught Tabaqui by the tail and swung him twice against a palm-tree to teach him better manners.”

“That was foolishness, for though Tabaqui is a mischief-maker, he would have told thee of something that concerned thee closely.

Shere Khan dare not kill thee in the jungle.

In a little time thou wilt be a man.”

“And what is a man that he should not run with his brothers?” said Mowgli.

“I was born in the jungle. I have obeyed the Law of the Jungle, and there is no wolf of ours from whose paws I have not pulled a thorn. Surely they are my brothers!”

“There is no one in the jungle that knows that I, Bagheera, carry that mark—the mark of the collar; and yet, Little Brother, I was born among men, and it was among men that my mother died—in the cages of the king’s palace at Oodeypore.”

“And even as I returned to my jungle, so thou must go back to men at last—to the men who are thy brothers—if thou art not killed in the Council.”

“But why—but why should any wish to kill me?” said Mowgli.

“Not even I can look thee between the eyes, and I was born among men, and I love thee, Little Brother. The others they hate thee because their eyes cannot meet thine; because thou art wise; because thou hast pulled out thorns from their feet—because thou art a man.”

“What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give tongue. By thy very carelessness they know that thou art a man. But be wise. It is in my heart that when Akela misses his next kill—and at each hunt it costs him more to pin the buck—the Pack will turn against him and against thee. They will hold a jungle Council at the Rock, and then—and then—I have it!”

“That is a man. That is all a man,”

“If a cub can do it, there is nothing to fear.”

“Good! Now, I have seen men thrust a dry branch into that stuff, and presently the Red Flower blossomed at the end of it. Art thou not afraid?”

“No. Why should I fear? I remember now—if it is not a dream—how, before I was a Wolf, I lay beside the Red Flower, and it was warm and pleasant.”

“Are we all jackals, to fawn on this cattle butcher?

“Silence, thou man’s cub!”

“Free People, and ye too, jackals of Shere Khan, for twelve seasons I have led ye to and from the kill, and in all that time not one has been trapped or maimed. Now I have missed my kill. Ye know how that plot was made. Ye know how ye brought me up to an untried buck to make my weakness known. It was cleverly done. Your right is to kill me here on the Council Rock, now. Therefore, I ask, who comes to make an end of the Lone Wolf? For it is my right, by the Law of the Jungle, that ye come one by one.”

“Bah! What have we to do with this toothless fool? He is doomed to die! It is the man-cub who has lived too long. Free People, he was my meat from the first. Give him to me. I am weary of this man-wolf folly. He has troubled the jungle for ten seasons. Give me the man-cub, or I will hunt here always, and not give you one bone. He is a man, a man’cub, and from the marrow of my bones I hate him!”

“A man! A man! What has a man to do with us? Let him go to his own place.”

“He has eaten our food. He has slept with us. He has driven game for us. He has broken no word of the Law of the Jungle.”

“Also, I paid for him with a bull when he was accepted. The worth of a bull is little, but Bagheera’s honor is something that he will perhaps fight for,” said Bagheera in his gentlest voice.

“No man’s cub can run with the people of the jungle,”

“He is our brother in all but blood,”

Some of ye are eaters of cattle, and of others I have heard that, under Shere Khan″s teaching, ye go by dark night and snatch children from the villager″s doorstep.

I promise that if ye let the man-cub go to his own place, I will not, when my time comes to die, bare one tooth against ye.

“Save Akela from the death. He was ever thy friend.”

“I see that ye are dogs. I go from you to my own people—if they be my own people. The jungle is shut to me, and I must forget your talk and your companionship.”

“Because I was all but your brother in blood, I promise that when I am a man among men I will not betray ye to men as ye have betrayed me.”

“There shall be no war between any of us in the Pack. But here is a debt to pay before I go.”

“Let them fall, Mowgli. They are only tears.”

I loved thee more than ever I loved my cubs.”

“And when I come it will be to lay out Shere Khan’s hide upon the Council Rock. Do not forget me! Tell them in the jungle never to forget me!”

His spots are the joy of the Leopard: his horns are the Buffalo’s pride.

Be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known by the gloss of his hide.

But the jungle is large and the Cub he is small.

“A man’s cub is a man’s cub, and he must learn all the Law of the Jungle.”

“Is there anything in the jungle too little to be killed? No. That is why I teach him these things, and that is why I hit him, very softly, when he forgets.”

“Better he should be bruised from head to foot by me who love him than that he should come to harm through ignorance,”

“Well, look to it then that thou dost not kill the man-cub. He is no tree trunk to sharpen thy blunt claws upon. But what are those Master Words? I am more likely to give help than to ask it”—Bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue, ripping-chorus talons at the end of it—“still I should like to know.”

“I will call Mowgli and he shall say them—if he will. Come, Little Brother!”

“My head is ringing like a bee tree,”

“I come for Bagheera and not for thee, fat old Baloo!”

“The jungle has many tongues. I know them all.”

“A little thou knowest, but not much. See, O Bagheera, they never thank their teacher. Not one small wolfling has ever come back to thank old Baloo for his teachings. Say the word for the Hunting-People, then—great scholar.”

“We be of one blood, ye and I,”

“There—there! That was worth a little bruise,”

“No one then is to be feared,” Baloo wound up, patting his big furry stomach with pride. “Except his own tribe,” said Bagheera, under his breath; and then aloud to Mowgli, “Have a care for my ribs, Little Brother! What is all this dancing up and down?”

“And so I shall have a tribe of my own, and lead them through the branches all day long.”

“What is this new folly, little dreamer of dreams?” said Bagheera. “Yes, and throw branches and dirt at old Baloo,” Mowgli went on. “They have promised me this. Ah!”

“Thou hast been with the Monkey People—the gray apes—the people without a law—the eaters of everything. That is great shame.”

“I went away, and the gray apes came down from the trees and had pity on me. No one else cared.”

“The pity of the Monkey People!”

“The stillness of the mountain stream! The cool of the summer sun! And then, man-cub?”

“They lie. They have always lied.”

“I have taught thee all the Law of the Jungle for all the peoples of the jungle—except the Monkey-Folk who live in the trees.

They have no speech of their own, but use the stolen words which they overhear when they listen, and peep, and wait up above in the branches.

“Their way is not our way. They are without leaders. They have no remembrance. They boast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs in the jungle, but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter and all is forgotten.”

“We of the jungle have no dealings with them. We do not drink where the monkeys drink; we do not go where the monkeys go; we do not hunt where they hunt; we do not die where they die.”

“The Jungle-People put them out of their mouths and out of their minds. They are very many, evil, dirty, shameless, and they desire, if they have any fixed desire, to be noticed by the Jungle People. But we do not notice them even when they throw nuts and filth on our heads.”

“The Monkey-People are forbidden,” said Baloo, “forbidden to the Jungle-People. Remember.”

“I—I? How was I to guess he would play with such dirt. The Monkey People! Faugh!”

“He has noticed us! Bagheera has noticed us. All the Jungle-People admire us for our skill and our cunning.”

“We be of one blood, thou and I.”

“Mowgli, the Frog. Man-cub they call me! Mark my trail!”

“They never do what they set out to do. Always pecking at new things are the Bandar-log.

“What was the use of half slaying him with blows if thou didst not warn him?”

“Haste! O haste! We—we may catch them yet!”

“At that speed! It would not tire a wounded cow.

Teacher of the Law—cub-beater—

Roll me into the hives of the wild bees that I may be stung to death, and bury me with the Hyaena, for I am most miserable of bears!

Why did I not warn thee against the Monkey-Folk instead of breaking thy head?

Now perhaps I may have knocked the day’s lesson out of his mind, and he will be alone in the jungle without the Master Words.”

“What would the jungle think if I, the Black Panther, curled myself up like Ikki the Porcupine, and howled?”

“What do I care what the jungle thinks? He may be dead by now.”

“Unless and until they drop him from the branches in sport, or kill him out of idleness, I have no fear for the man-cub. He is wise and well taught, and above all he has the eyes that make the Jungle-People afraid. But (and it is a great evil) he is in the power of the Bandar-log, and they, because they live in trees, have no fear of any of our people.”

“Fool that I am! Oh, fat, brown, root-digging fool that I am,”

“He can climb as well as they can. He steals the young monkeys in the night. The whisper of his name makes their wicked tails cold.”

“What will he do for us? He is not of our tribe, being footless—and with most evil eyes,”

“Bagheera, who did not know much about Kaa, was naturally suspicious.”

“A blow more or less is nothing to thee, Bagheera or Baloo, but I—I have to wait and wait for days in a wood-path and climb half a night on the mere chance of a young ape.

“I am a fair length—a fair length,”

″ I came very near to falling on my last hunt—very near indeed—and the noise of my slipping, for my tail was not tight wrapped around the tree, waked the Bandar-log, and they called me most evil names.”

“Footless, yellow earth-worm,” said Bagheera under his whiskers, as though he were trying to remember something.

“Something of that kind it was that they shouted to us last moon, but we never noticed them. They will say anything—even that thou hast lost all thy teeth, and wilt not face anything bigger than a kid, because (they are indeed shameless, these Bandar-log)—because thou art afraid of the he-goat’s horns,”

“When I came up into the sun today I heard them whooping among the tree-tops.”

“I am no more than the old and sometimes very foolish Teacher of the Law to the Seeonee wolf-cubs, and Bagheera here—”

Is Bagheera, said the Black Panther, and his jaws shut with a snap, for he did not believe in being humble.

The trouble is this, Kaa. Those nut-stealers and pickers of palm leaves have stolen away our man-cub of whom thou hast perhaps heard.

“The best and wisest and boldest of man-cubs—my own pupil, who shall make the name of Baloo famous through all the jungles; and besides, I—we—love him, Kaa.”

“They fear me alone. They have good reason,”

“Chattering, foolish, vain—vain, foolish, and chattering, are the monkeys.”

“But a man-thing in their hands is in no good luck. They grow tired of the nuts they pick, and throw them down. They carry a branch half a day, meaning to do great things with it, and then they snap it in two. That man-thing is not to be envied. They called me also—`yellow fish’ was it not?”

“The jungle alone knows. Toward the sunset, I believe,”

“I will remember thee in my next kill, and put aside the head for thee alone, O best of kites!”

“But I am proud of him, and now we must go to the Cold Lairs.”

“Besides, they called me speckled frog.”

“We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true.”

“Now as you are a new listener and can carry our words back to the Jungle-People so that they may notice us in future, we will tell you all about our most excellent selves.”

“Stay there,” shouted the monkeys, “till we have killed thy friends, and later we will play with thee—if the Poison-People leave thee alive.”

“To the tank, Bagheera. Roll to the water tanks. Roll and plunge! Get to the water!”

“We be of one blood, ye and I”

“Take him away. He dances like Mao the Peacock. He will crush our young,”

“Very soft is his skin, and he is not unlike the Bandar-log. Have a care, manling, that I do not mistake thee for a monkey some twilight when I have newly changed my coat.”

“I take my life from thee tonight. My kill shall be thy kill if ever thou art hungry, O Kaa.”

“I kill nothing,—I am too little,—but I drive goats toward such as can use them.

“A brave heart and a courteous tongue,” said he. “They shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling. But now go hence quickly with thy friends. Go and sleep, for the moon sets, and what follows it is not well that thou shouldst see.”

“Good. Begins now the dance—the Dance of the Hunger of Kaa. Sit still and watch.”

“In a little time, had I stayed, I should have walked down his throat.”

“I saw no more than a big snake making foolish circles till the dark came. And his nose was all sore. Ho! Ho!”

“True, but he has cost us heavily in time which might have been spent in good hunting, in wounds, in hair—I am half plucked along my back—and last of all, in honor.

For, remember, Mowgli, I, who am the Black Panther, was forced to call upon Kaa for protection, and Baloo and I were both made stupid as little birds by the Hunger Dance.

“I am an evil man-cub, and my stomach is sad in me.”

“Sorrow never stays punishment. But remember, Bagheera, he is very little.”

Bagheera gave him half a dozen love-taps from a panther’s point of view (they would hardly have waked one of his own cubs), but for a seven-year-old boy they amounted to as severe a beating as you could wish to avoid.

“Now,” said Bagheera, “jump on my back, Little Brother, and we will go home.”

“Here we sit in a branchy row, Thinking of beautiful things we know; Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do, All complete, in a minute or two— Something noble and wise and good, Done by merely wishing we could.”

“We’ve forgotten, but—never mind, Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!”

“So men are afraid of the People of the Jungle here also.”

“Look at the marks on his arms and legs. They are the bites of wolves. He is but a wolf-child run away from the jungle.”

“This is a poor reward for following thee twenty miles. Thou smellest of wood smoke and cattle—altogether like a man already.”

“Thou wilt not forget that thou art a wolf? Men will not make thee forget?” said Gray Brother anxiously. “Never. I will always remember that I love thee and all in our cave. But also I will always remember that I have been cast out of the Pack.”

Men are only men, Little Brother, and their talk is like the talk of frogs in a pond.

“To talk of the soul of a money-lender in a beast that never had the courage of a jackal is child’s talk.”

“I am an old man. I did not know that thou wast anything more than a herdsboy. May I rise up and go away, or will thy servant tear me to pieces?”

“It is in my head that, if bullets mean anything, they would cast thee out.”

“Come back, or we will stone thee.”

“Fare you well, children of men, and thank Messua that I do not come in with my wolves and hunt you up and down your street.”

Mowgli made up a song that came up into his throat all by itself, and he shouted it aloud, leaping up and down on the rattling skin, and beating time with his heels till he had no more breath left, while Gray Brother and Akela howled between the verses.

“Man-Pack and Wolf-Pack have cast me out,” said Mowgli. “Now I will hunt alone in the jungle.”

“Alala! I have no cloth to wrap me. The kites will see that I am naked. I am ashamed to meet all these people. Lend me thy coat, Shere Khan. Lend me thy gay striped coat that I may go to the Council Rock”

“Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green. The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us. At rest in the hollows that rustle between. Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow, Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas!”

You mustn’t swim till you’re six weeks old, Or your head will be sunk by your heels; And summer gales and Killer Whales are bad for baby seals. Are bad for baby seals, dear rat, As bad as bad can be; But splash and grow strong, And you can’t be wrong. Child of the Open Sea!”

“So long as you don’t lie in muddy water and get mange, or rub the hard sand into a cut or scratch, and so long as you never go swimming when there is a heavy sea, nothing will hurt you here.”

“Remember, Mother, it is always the seventh wave that goes farthest up the beach.”

Son, I’m proud of you, and what’s more, I’ll come with you to your island—if there is such a place.”

I met my mates in the morning (I’ll never meet them more!); They came and went in legions that darkened all the shore. And o’er the foam-flecked offing as far as voice could reach We hailed the landing-parties and we sang them up the beach.

“There are more things to find out about in this house,” he said to himself, “than all my family could find out in all their lives. I shall certainly stay and find out.”

But Nag and Nagaina had disappeared into the grass. When a snake misses its stroke, it never says anything or gives any sign of what it means to do next.

“Be careful. I am Death!”

“Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes,”

“Oh, you stupid tuft of feathers!”

“He will never eat my babies again.”

“You don’t know when to do the right thing at the right time. You’re safe enough in your nest there, but it’s war for me down here. Stop singing a minute, Darzee.”

“Yes, you will go away, and you will never come back. For you will go to the rubbish heap with Nag. Fight, widow! The big man has gone for his gun! Fight!”

I will go out until the day, until the morning break— Out to the wind’s untainted kiss, the water’s clean caress; I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket stake. I will revisit my lost loves, and playmates masterless!

“Wah!” said Little Toomai, “thou art a big elephant,” and he wagged his fluffy head, quoting his father.

“Thou art a boy, and as wild as a buffalo-calf.

I am getting old, and I do not love wild elephants.

Give me brick elephant lines, one stall to each elephant, and big stumps to tie them to safely, and flat, broad roads to exercise upon, instead of this come-and-go camping.

“There goes one piece of good elephant stuff at least. ‘Tis a pity to send that young jungle-cock to molt in the plains.”

“When thou hast seen the elephants dance. That is the proper time. Come to me when thou hast seen the elephants dance, and then I will let thee go into all the Keddahs.”

“We have swept the hills of wild elephants at the last catch.

Ohe, little one. Art thou there? Well, I will tell thee, for thou hast a cool head. They will dance, and it behooves thy father, who has swept all the hills of all the elephants, to double-chain his pickets to-night.

“Tend to him if he grows restless in the night,”

“have I followed my lord, the elephant, but never have I heard that any child of man had seen what this child has seen. By all the Gods of the Hills, it is—what can we say?”

Give him honor, my lords!

“Master, of a million mouths, is not one unfed?”

“All have had their part, Even he, the little one, hidden ‘neath thy heart.”

But the way of Tweedle-dum is not the way of Tweedle-dee.

“What shall I do? Where shall I go? I have fought with a white thing that waved, and it took a stick and hit me on the neck.”

“we dreamed bad dreams in the night, and we were very much afraid.

“He’s calling for me. Here, youngster, stop squealing. The dark never hurt anybody yet.”

“Anybody can be forgiven for being scared in the night,”

“If you don’t trust your man, you may as well run away at once. That’s what some of our horses do, and I don’t blame them.