Those who will not come back to simpler theories are prigs, for whom the machine-made notion is higher than experience. Now Mr. Kipling, in his warm way, hates many things, but he hates the prig for preference. Aurelian McGoggin, better known as the Blastoderm, is a prig of the over-educated type, and upon him falls the awful calamity of sudden and complete nerve-collapse. Lieutenant Golightly, in the story which bears his name, is a prig who values himself for spotless attire and clockwork precision of manner; he therefore is mauled and muddied up to his eyes, and then arrested under painfully derogatory conditions. In _Lispeth_ we get the missionary prig, who thinks that the Indian instincts can be effaced by a veneer of Christianity. Mr. Kipling hates "the sheltered life." The men he likes are those who have been thrown out of their depth at an early age, and taught to swim off a boat. The very remarkable story of _Thrown Away_ shows the effect of preparing for India by a life "unspotted from the world" in England; it is as hopelessly tragic as any in Mr. Kipling's somewhat grim repertory. Against the _régime_ of the prig Mr. Kipling sets the _régime_ of Strickland. Over and over again he introduces this mysterious figure, always with a phrase of extreme approval. Strickland is in the police, and his power consists in his determination to know the East as the natives know it. He can pass through the whole of Upper India, dressed as a fakir, without attracting the least attention. Sometimes, as in _Beyond the Pale_, he may know too much. But this is an exception, and personal to himself. Mr. Kipling's conviction is that this is the sort of man to pervade India for us, and that one Strickland is worth a thousand self-conceited civilians. But even below the Indian prig, because he has at least known India, is the final object of Mr. Kipling's loathing, "Pagett, M.P.," the radical English politician who comes out for four months to set everybody right. His chastisement is always severe and often comic. But in one very valuable paper, which Mr. Kipling must not be permitted to leave unreprinted, _The Enlightenment of Pagett, M.P._, he has dealt elaborately and quite seriously with this noxious creature. Whether Mr. Kipling is right or wrong, far be it from me in my ignorance to pretend to know. But his way of putting these things is persuasive.