From Sea to Sea; Letters of TravelKipling, Rudyard
General
From Sea to Sea; Letters of Travel
Kipling, Rudyard
Asia -- Description and travel; Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936 -- Travel; United States -- Description and travel; Voyages and travels
Is there really such a place as Hong-Kong? People say so, but I have not
yet seen it. Once indeed the clouds lifted and I saw a granite house
perched like a cherub on nothing, a thousand feet above the town. It
looked as if it might be the beginning of a civil station, but a man
came up the street and said, "See this fog It will be like this till
September. You'd better go away." I shall not go. I shall encamp in
front of the place until the fog lifts and the rain ceases. At present,
and it is the third day of April, I am sitting in front of a large coal
fire and thinking of the "frosty Caucasus"--you poor creatures in
torment afar. And you think as you go to office and orderly-room that
you are helping forward England's mission in the East. 'Tis a pretty
delusion, and I am sorry to destroy it, but you have conquered the wrong
country.
Let us annex China.
No. VIII
OF JENNY AND HER FRIENDS. SHOWING HOW A MAN MAY GO TO SEE LIFE AND MEET
DEATH THERE. OF THE FELICITY OF LIFE AND THE HAPPINESS OF CORINTHIAN
KATE. THE WOMAN AND THE CHOLERA.
"Love and let love, and so will I,
But, sweet, for me no more with you,
Not while I live, not though I die.
Good night, good-by!"
I am entirely the man about town, and sickness is no word for my
sentiments. It began with an idle word in a bar-room. It ended goodness
knows where. That the world should hold French, German, and Italian
ladies of the ancient profession is no great marvel; but it is, to one
who has lived in India, something shocking to meet again Englishwomen in
the same sisterhood. When an opulent papa sends his son and heir round
the world to enlarge his mind, does he reflect, I wonder, on the places
into which the innocent strolls under the guidance of equally
inexperienced friends? I am disposed to think that he does not. In the
interest of the opulent papa, and from a genuine desire to see what they
call Life, with a capital Hell, I went through Hong-Kong for the space
of a night. I am glad that I am not a happy father with a stray son who
thinks that he knows all the ropes. Vice must be pretty much the same
all the round world over, but if a man wishes to get out of pleasure
with it, let him go to Hong-Kong.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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