When we come to _The Day's Work_ we are getting very near to Mr Kipling at his best. We should notice at this point that in all the stories we have so far surveyed the men have mattered less than the work they do. The great majority of Mr Kipling's tales are a song in praise of good work. Almost it seems as if, in the year 1897, their author had himself realised the significance of this; for it was in that year he published the volume entitled _The Day's Work_; and it was the best volume, taking it from cover to cover, that had as yet appeared. The first and best story in _The Day's Work_ at once introduces the theme which threads all the best work of Mr Kipling. _The Bridge-Builders_ is the story of a Bridge and incidentally of the men who built it. The crown has yet to be set upon a long agony of toil and disappointment. The master builder of the Bridge has put the prime of his energy and will into its building. Now it stands all but complete, with the Ganges gathering in her upper reaches for a mighty effort to throw off her strange fetters. The Bridge before the night of the flood has passed away becomes the symbol of a wrestle between the most ancient gods and the young will of man. Mr Kipling has put the Bridge into the foreground of his picture, has made of it the really sentient figure of the tale. Here definitely he writes the first chapter of his book of steam and steel; and we begin to be aware of an enthusiasm which is lacking in many of the highly finished proofs which preceded it that Mr Kipling could write almost anything as well as almost anybody else. In _The Day's Work_ he passes into a province which he was insistently urged to occupy by right of inspiration.