which presents similarities, yet that pitiful little narrative is, after all, a study from the outside; it fails to seize the heartstrings like Ameera's story. It is plain enough that the situation could never have been entered into with the same absorption by the author. "Love-o'-Women," too, in Many Inventions, grips the sympathies as none of the early tales do. The same may be said of several stories of this middle period. They are not the notes of a journalist-observer; they are a serious man's record of the points of view and mental sufferings of other minds. The composition of "The Destroyer of Traffic,” for example, is possible only to a writer of no little dramatic sympathy and capacity for selfdetachment. All the jauntiness of the early writings has now vanished. The tone is manly, wholesome, optimistic. The humor is kinder, the pathos less strained; the wise humility of maturity has succeeded the flippancy of youth.

14. SPIRITUAL TREATMENT OF CHARACTER.— If the temper of Mr. Kipling's first period was satiric and that of his second period dramatic, that of his third may be called philosophic. It is a remarkable evolution. While Mr. Kipling is a charming story-teller still (he is nothing if not artist), the reader is impressed by a growing undercurrent of allegory and symbolism. In the Jungle Tales the author sets man over against the background of nature, shows us the inferiority of the overcivilized

and house-bred man to the natural man, and of human society, in more than one particular, to brute society. Is not the "Law of the Jungle” "the reproof of human codes in its comprehensive justice"? "Captains Courageous," too, is one long parable on the relation of character to environment. The Day's Work is an elaborate piece of symbolism, standing for the tremendous conflict of man with the forces of nature and of circumstance. The struggle may be against the wrath of a flood, as in "The Bridge-Builders," or against a relentless famine, as in "William the Conqueror." The struggle may be that of the social unit to adjust itself to the needs of the social organization, as in the allegory called "The Ship that Found Herself,"

every

where, however, it is conflict of will with will or of force with force. "I like men who do things," confesses William the Conqueror. All the men in The Day's Work do things, all the horses and locomotives and marine engines do things. Mr. Kipling's philosophy of life is summed up in this sentence from "The Bridge-Builders " : "The order in all cases was to stand by the day's work and wait instructions." The duty of struggle, the duty of obedience these are the two articles in this strenuous creed. “It's all in the day's work," says Scott in "William the Conqueror." "It's all in the day's run," says .007 in the locomotive story. Play the game don't talk," whickers the “Maltese Cat." The Jungle

Books stand for the struggle for supremacy between natural and artificial forces. "Captains Courageous" teaches the necessity of learning to take orders. This, too, is the lesson McAndrew obtains from his engines

“Law, Orrder, Duty an' Restraint, Obedience, Discipline." Discipline, however, is only to the end of more effective activity. We obey orders that we may catch more cod on the Banks or make a quicker run to port.

Most of the poetry is of the same timbre. If the prose taken together is an epic which sings the eternal struggle of man to survive against the powers which war against his body and soul, such poems as "The Song of the English" and most of the others in varying degree sing the struggle for race-survival between the conquering Saxons and their rivals. It may be said that one gets in certain recent writings the note of reverence and humility

"Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

An humble and a contrite heart."

Such submission, however, is not opposed to the gospel of endeavor; it is a part of it. It is Cromwell's sort of submission — the stooping of the soldier to buckle on his armor. In the light of “The Truce of the Bear" and "The White Man's Burden," which followed the "Recessional and to some degree interpreted it, we cannot doubt that while

"The captains and the kings depart,"

they don't depart to their homes and become tradespeople. Instead of laying down their weapons they sleep upon them. One of Mr. Kipling's sturdy heroes confesses, "The Lord abideth back of me to guide my fighting-arm." This is the sort of deity Mr. Kipling invokes. Indeed, his conception of God is more Hebraic than Christian. God is rep

resented in his writings as either the " Lord God of Battles," or the "Master of all Good Workmen." The obedience to God which Kipling enjoins is the sort of obedience which he recommends for Harvey Cheyne in "Captains Courageous" that obedience which enables the boy by submitting himself to the commands of the skipper to work to better result himself. It is significant that the term Mr. Kipling selects for the Deity in his remarkable invocation which concludes Life's Handicap is "Great Overseer." In his poem addressed to Wolcott Balestier he makes reference to "Our wise Lord God, master of every trade." Not only does Mr. Kipling transfer his conception of effort to the future life where we shall labor "each for the joy of the working,” but he makes faithful work on earth the price of admission both to heaven and Hades. Gunga Din, cut off in mid-career, dies in the performance of duty. He will be permitted to finish his task in "the place where 'e is gone." It is not Gunga Din, but the milk and water Tomlinson who is refused admission in turn to heaven and hell

because unable to answer the test,

done?"

"What ha' ye

But the poet has for his end neither the satisfaction of fighting-the glow of the muscles nor the accomplishment of vulgar success. McAndrew, the Scotch engineer, who takes comfort in reflecting, "I am o' service to my kind. Ye wadna' blame the thought," echoes Mr. Kipling's own creed. Even in the earliest of his long stories he writes, "If we make light of our work, by using it for our own ends, our work will make light of us." And again, "You're on the wrong road to success. It isn't got at by sacrificing other people, - I've had that much knocked into me; you must sacrifice yourself, and live under orders." The closing lines of one of his most devout poems breathe the same spirit:

"One stone the more swings to her place
In that dread Temple of Thy Worth;
It is enough that through Thy grace
I saw naught common on Thy earth.

To such a vision, what is commonly called failure seems unimportant. Is not Mr. Kipling him

'L'envoi to Life's Handicap.