inquires: 'D'you stop your parrit screamin' of a 'ot day when the cage is a-cookin' 'is pore little pink toes orf?' Similarly a regimental carpenter likens the splitting open of a boat to 'a cock-eyed Chinese lotus,' or a London street-girl entreats: 'But cou—couldn't you take and live with me till Miss Right comes along? I'm only Miss Wrong, I know, but I'd,' etc. etc. Well, I respectfully submit that the speaker here is Mr. Rudyard Kipling, not Mulvaney, nor Ortheris, nor another. Instances of this sort of utterly inartistic insertion of little bits of Mr. Rudyard Kipling into Mr. Rudyard Kipling's 'rude figures of a rough-hewn race' are very plentiful, and are certainly not edifying samples of the way he shows his godlike 'power over these.' But how, when taken from the larger point of view, this defect limits the value of his criticism of the main features of Anglo-Indian life, which he designs to 'illustrate'! To-day we are all full of eagerness and curiosity to know of what sort our short-service soldiers are. Mr. Kipling dedicates his booklet to 'that very strong man, T. Atkins,' who is surely the very person in question. But what does he tell us about him? Little or nothing. It is the old long-service man who is his game. Into the mouth of Mulvaney, who gives us most of the military criticism, is put the ancient and stock abuse of the short-service
