She had investigated, or at any rate taught, Delsarte, Physical Culture,
Dress-Reform, the Blue-glass Cure, Scientific Physiognomy, Phrenology,
Cheiromancy, Astrology, Vegetarianism, Edenic Diet, Single Tax,
Evolution, Mental Healing, Christian Science, Spiritualism, Theosophy,
and Hypnotism. All these metamorphoses of thought had Mrs. S. Cora Grubb
passed through, and was not yet a finished butterfly. Some of the ideas
she had left far behind, but she still believed in them as fragments of
truth suitable for feeble growing souls that could not bear the full
light of revelation in one burst. She held honorary memberships in most
of the outgrown societies, attended annual meetings of others, and kept
in touch with all the rest by being present at their social reunions.
One of her present enthusiasms was her ‘Kipling Brothers,’ the boys’ band
enlisted under the motto, ‘I saw a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and
they were all my brothers.’ She believed that there was no salvation for
a boy outside of a band. Banded somehow he must be, then badged,
beribboned, bannered, and bye-lawed. From the moment a boy’s mother had
left off her bye-lows, Mrs. Grubb wanted him put under bye-laws. She
often visited Mistress Mary with the idea that some time she could
interest her in one of her thousand schemes; but this special call was to
see if the older children, whose neat handiwork she had seen and admired,
could embroider mottoes on cardboard to adorn the Kipling room at an
approaching festival. She particularly wanted ‘Look not upon the Wine’
done in blood-red upon black, and ‘Shun the Filthy Weed’ in smoke-colour
on bright green. She had in her hand a card with the points for her
annual address noted upon it, for this sort of work she ordinarily did in
the horse-cars. These ran:
1st. Value of individuality. ‘_I_ saw.’
2nd. Value of observation. ‘I _saw_.’
3rd. Value of numbers. ‘I saw a _hundred_ men.’
4th. Importance of belonging to the male sex. It was _men_ who were
seen on the road.
5th. What and where is Delhi?
6th. Description of the road thither.
7th. Every boy has his Delhi.
8th. Are you ‘on the road’?
9th. The brotherhood of man.
10th. The Kipling Brothers’ Call to Arms.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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