_The Jungle Book_ by Rudyard Kipling was first published as a book in 1894. Some of the stories had appeared in the magazine _St. Nicholas_ before that date. _The Second Jungle Book_ was published in 1895. Kipling was born in Bombay, India, in 1865. It gives one a wonderful, very delightful thrill to take up a book by a new writer, whose name one has never heard before, and after reading a little while, to find oneself convinced that this unknown author has unmistakable genius. Some day you will likely have the pleasure of discovering for yourselves a writer of, perhaps, the first rank. The grand-fathers and grand-mothers or perhaps the fathers and mothers of boys and girls to-day experienced this thrill when they read for the first time one of Kipling's short stories of India. Rudyard Kipling had been writing nearly ten years, and was a well-known author, before he published _The Jungle Books_, which are his first books for young people. Like some other books for boys and girls, older people are fascinated by them also. Kipling's father, John Lockwood Kipling, was an Englishman in the Indian Civil Service. His mother was the daughter of a {104} Wesleyan minister, whose sons and daughters all have showed distinguished ability. Kipling lived in India when he was a child. While he was still a small boy, he was sent home to school in England. But from his child's recollections of India have come pictures of Indian life, and an understanding and interpretation of the people of that widely-spreading, mysterious country with its swarming population, its plains, mountains, and deep jungles where lions, tigers and many other animals live, which are unparalleled elsewhere in English literature. Carried safely and swiftly by the magic of Kipling's stories, we may all visit the Indian jungle, hear Shere Khan, the tiger, roar, stand with the Lone Wolf on the Council Rock, learn to know Bagheera, the Black Panther, Baloo, the bear, Hathi, the elephant and many more of the jungle people, as well as Father Wolf, Mother Wolf, and the Pack. The Man cub, the boy Mowgli, is the pattern and epitome of what every boy likes to be, brave, resourceful, loyal, quick to see and hold advantage, staunch in friendship, fond of play, longing to do great deeds, and now and then showing that he is capable. The stories of Mowgli are collected in _The Jungle Book_. In _The Second Jungle Book_ are such stories as Rikki-tikki-tavi, the Mongoose; the White Seal; Toomai of the Elephants; and Her Majesty's Servants, which is a tale of the animals of a military camp. None of us to-day can imagine how any writer could possibly create finer stories of animals than Kipling has written in _The Jungle Books_. {105}