“I left my mark on the corporal's face, and I think he'll keep it there!" The children of the Zodiac are the Ram, the Bull, the Lion, the Twins, and the Girl (Virgo). The principal actors are Leo and the Girl, who, after leading the life of gods, come to share earth conditions, and learn the mystery of love and the meaning of death. Though the setting of the story is fanciful, the motif is Kipling's favorite one: Each must do the day's work assigned him with brave patience. Or, in the concluding words of the allegory, "What comes or does not come, we must not be afraid." "In Children of the Zodiac' there is a defence and justification of preaching such as St. Paul himself might say amen to. W. B. Parker, Public Opinion. For adverse estimates of the story see Academy, July 1, 1893; also Athenæum, July 8, 1893. The latter review finds it obscure and wearisome, and thinks it the "one failure in the whole collection. CHIL'S SONG. (Second Jungle Book.) A poem following Red Dog" in the Second Jungle Book. It is the song which Chil sang as the kites dropped down one after another to the river-bed," when the great fight with the pack of dholes was finished. song full of CHOLERA CAMP. (The Seven Seas.) A rude pathos. There is cholera in the camp, with a death roll of ten a day. - CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT, THE. (Life's Handicap.) A description of a fierce night in August at Lahore. Crowded roof-tops, Muezzin's midnight call, unburied corpses, snoring kites, lean dogs, sleeping lepers, scudding jackals, all are photographed unforgettably. -- "As a description it is wonderfully vivid and convincing."— Spectator. "A truly wonderful piece of word-painting." Athenæum. "Never was there a more astonishing picture.” Blackwoods. (See From Sea to Sea.) CLEARED. (Ballads.) An invective against certain men high in official life who instigated a notorious shooting affair in Ireland, which had wide-reaching political effects. The whitewashing Commission "cleared" these "honorable gentlemen" from the stigma of complicity in the crime, but an honest Englishman holds them to be worse even than the assassins. "As a piece of deadly, logical, impassioned invective, Cleared' may scarce be matched." Observer. Rings false from first line to last." COME BACK TO me, Beloved, or I die! of Bisesa's song, which begins, "Alone upon the housetops, to the North --National - Francis The refrain I turn and watch the lightning in the sky." (See "Beyond the Pale," Plain Tales from the Hills.) CONFERENCE OF THE POWERS, A. (Many Inventions.) – Mr. Eustace Cleever, novelist, falls into the company of three young fellows home from the army. This self-complacent "decorator and colorman in words has never been ten miles from fellow-Englishmen, and has been wont to regard warfare as unnatural if not essentially vulgar. Always ready to draw out men in search of "material," he encourages the youths to talk of raids and battles. He has ends by learning a good many things, and confesses that he been moving in worlds not realized.'' CONSEQUENCES. (Plain Tales.) Celebrates Mrs. Hauksbee's cleverness, and the audacity of one Tarrion, who, with that lady's help, obtained possession of secret information useful to the Government, and, armed therewith, demanded and received a fat appointment. Conundrum OF THE WORKSHOPS, THE. (Ballads.) A poem expressing scorn for merely professional critics, the slaves of form and tradition, who insist on asking about work which they admit to be clever, striking, or human, “ Yes, but is it art?” - Academy. CONVERSION OF AURELIAN MCGOGGIN, THE. (Plain Tales.) - McGoggin was all head, no physique, and a hundred theories," which latter he exploited on all occasions. He worked nine hours a day in the Indian summer, and finally collapsed. The break-down took the form of aphasia, which caused loss of speech and memory. After three months of rest he recovered, but he was cured of his intellectual conceit. Something had at last happened which he couldn't understand. COURTING OF DINAH SHADD, THE. (Life's Handicap.) Courting of Mulvaney tells of his first meeting with Dinah Shadd, and of the progress, not always smooth-running, of the courtship. After his engagement Judy Sheehy inveigles him into drunken protestations of affection, and afterwards tries to prove that he is her " promised man. In this plot she is ably backed up by Mother Sheehy, a broadly comic character, who, when she finds that Mulvaney remains true to Dinah, curses both him and his sweet "The one story in the book [L. H.] admirable from first to last is The Courting of Dinah Shadd.'' Lionel Johnson in Academy. CUPID'S ARROWS. (Plain Tales.) - A beautiful girl without fortune was shown attention by a very ugly but rich commissioner in Simla. Mamma was overjoyed, but daughter, while flattered, vastly preferred young Cubbon, a handsome dragoon with no prospects. The commissioner arranged an archery tournament for ladies, with a diamondstudded bracelet as prize. All could see that the bracelet was a gift to the girl, who was the champion archer thereabouts, and that acceptance carried with it the heart and hand of the great man. The contest came. The girl deliberately shot wild and lost the prize, mamma wept with shame and disappointment, and the boy carried the real prize away after all. "The archery contest in Cupid's Arrows' needs only to be compared with a similar scene in Daniel Deronda to show how much more closely Mr. Kipling keeps his eye on details than George Eliot did.” Edmund Gosse. DANNY DEEVER. (Ballads.) A powerfully realistic ballad. Danny Deever was hanged in the presence of his regiment for having shot a sleeping comrade. Edmund C. Stedman speaks of "the originality and weird power" of this poem, and Lionel Johnson pronounces it in the Academy "the most poetical, in the sense of being the most imaginative and heightened in expression," of the Barrack-Room Ballads. DARZEE'S CHAUNT. Verses following "Rikki-Tikki- DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT, THE. (Plain Tales.) DEDICATION TO THE CITY OF BOMBAY. (The Seven 66 For I was born in her gate, Between the palms and the sea, Where the world-end steamers wait. - DEDICATORY POEM. (Ballads.) These lines, ad- "Beyond the path of the outmost sun, through utter dark- For a detailed analysis, see the N. Y. Independent, |