Life's Handicap: Being Stories of Mine Own PeopleKipling, Rudyard
History
Life's Handicap: Being Stories of Mine Own People
Kipling, Rudyard
India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947 -- Fiction; India -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, English
And so she had. The great deerhound was couched statelily on her own
bedstead on her own blanket, while, in the next room, the idle, empty,
ceiling-cloth waggled as it trailed on the table.
NAMGAY DOOLA
There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin,
The dew on his wet robe hung heavy and chill;
Ere the steamer that brought him had passed out of hearin’,
He was Alderman Mike inthrojuicin’ a bill!
AMERICAN SONG.
Once upon a time there was a King who lived on the road to Thibet, very
many miles in the Himalayas. His Kingdom was eleven thousand feet above
the sea and exactly four miles square; but most of the miles stood on
end owing to the nature of the country. His revenues were rather
less than four hundred pounds yearly, and they were expended in the
maintenance of one elephant and a standing army of five men. He was
tributary to the Indian Government, who allowed him certain sums for
keeping a section of the Himalaya-Thibet road in repair. He further
increased his revenues by selling timber to the railway-companies; for
he would cut the great deodar trees in his one forest, and they fell
thundering into the Sutlej river and were swept down to the plains three
hundred miles away and became railway-ties. Now and again this King,
whose name does not matter, would mount a ringstraked horse and ride
scores of miles to Simla-town to confer with the Lieutenant-Governor
on matters of state, or to assure the Viceroy that his sword was at the
service of the Queen-Empress. Then the Viceroy would cause a ruffle of
drums to be sounded, and the ringstraked horse and the cavalry of the
State---two men in tatters--and the herald who bore the silver stick
before the King would trot back to their own place, which lay between
the tail of a heaven-climbing glacier and a dark birch-forest.
Now, from such a King, always remembering that he possessed one
veritable elephant, and could count his descent for twelve hundred
years, I expected, when it was my fate to wander through his dominions,
no more than mere license to live.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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