Thro' the Year with Kipling Being a Year-Book of Selections from the Earlier INTRODUCTION. T HIS little book furnishes a quotation from Kipling for each day in the year. The editor believes there is no similar compilation in the market. After completing his task he has learned, indeed, that a Kipling Birthday Book is on the catalogue of a prominent publisher, but he has not himself seen it. Its purpose must necessarily be different from the present one, for a birthday book aims to present a series of pleasant mottoes appropriate to anniversaries, while a year-book, free from any such restriction, aims at giving a series of suggestive thoughts for daily reading. Many of these bits from Kipling are far from pleasant; they are, however, stimulating, sensible, and true to experience. It should be remembered that the "laureate of the greater Britain" is as much humorist as he is philosopher and bard. His satire is never unkind, but it is often stinging. To omit everything from this collection except pretty paragraphs and verses of compliment would be to present a Rudyard Kipling very untrue to life. |