Kipling the Mechanic is less useful than an encyclopædia, and not any more interesting. A comic paper describes him as "now a technical expert; at one time a popular writer. This young man was born in India, came to his promise in America, and lost himself in England. His _Plain Tales of the Hills_ (_sic_) has been succeeded by _Enigmatical Expositions from the Dark Valleys_.... Mr. Kipling has declared that the Americans have never forgiven him for not dying in their country. On the contrary, they have never forgiven him for not having written anything better since he was here than he did before. But while there's Kipling, there's hope." It is to be earnestly hoped that he will cease describing the machinery of automobiles, ships, locomotives, and flying air-vessels, and once more look in his heart and write. His worst enemy is himself. He seems to be in terror lest he should say something ordinary and commonplace. He has been so praised for his originality and powerful imagination, that his later books give one the impression of a man writing in the sweat of his face, with the grim determination to make every sentence a literary event. Such a tale as _Wireless_ shows that the zeal for originality has eaten him up. One can feel on every page the straining for effect, and it is as exhausting to read as it is to watch a wrestling-match, and not nearly so entertaining. If Mr. Kipling goes on in the vein of these later years, he may ultimately survive his reputation, as many a good man has done before him. I should think even now, when the author of _Puck of Pook's Hill_ turns over the pages of _The Man Who Would Be King_, he would say with Swift, "Good God! what a genius I had when I wrote that book!"