The originality, freshness, and power of all this work made Europe stare and gasp. For some years he had as much notoriety as reputation. We used to hear of the Kipling "craze," the Kipling "boom," the Kipling "fad," and Kipling clubs sprang up like mushrooms. It was difficult to read him in cool blood, because he was discussed pro and con with so much passion. He was fashionable, in the manner of ping-pong; and there were not wanting pessimistic prophets who looked upon him as a comet rather than a fixed star. So late as 1895 a well-known American journal said of him: "Rudyard Kipling is supposed to be the cleverest man now handling the pen. The magazines accept everything he writes, and pay him fabulous prices. Kipling is now printing a series of Jungle Stories that are so weak and foolish that we have never been able to read them. They are not fables: they are stories of animals talking, and they are pointless, so far as the average reader is able to judge. We have asked a good many magazine editors about Kipling's Jungle Stories; they all express the same astonishment that the magazine editors accept them. Kipling will soon be dropped by the magazine editors; they will inevitably discover that his stories are not admired by the people. Robert Louis Stevenson died just in time to save him from the same fate." Many honestly believed that Mr. Kipling could write only in flashes; that he was incapable of producing a complete novel. His answer to this was _The Light that Failed_, which, although he made the mistake of giving it a reversible ending, indicated that his own lamp had yet sufficient oil. In 1895 he added immensely to the solidity of his fame by printing _The Brushwood Boy_, the scenes of which he announced previously would be laid in "England, India, and the world of dreams." Here he temporarily forsook the land of mysterious horror for the land of mysterious beauty, and many were grateful, and said so. In 1896 the appearance of _The Seven Seas_ proved beyond cavil that he was something more than a music-hall rimester--that he was really among the English poets. The very next year _The Recessional_ stirred the religious consciousness of the whole English-speaking race. And although much of his subsequent career seems to be a nullification of the sentiment of that poem, it will remain imperishable when the absent-minded beggars and the flannelled fools have reached the oblivion they so richly deserve.