We have many to choose from--_Stalky_, for instance. _Stalky_ has come in for a shower of abuse from certain quarters. He hits the sentimentalist hard. We are told that the book is vulgar, that the famous trio are "little beasts." (I think Mr. A. C. Benson said so.) Still, Mr. Kipling never touches any subject which he does not adorn, and in _Stalky_ he brings out vividly some of the salient features of modern school life. He has drawn masters as they have never been drawn before: the portraits may be cruel, biassed, not sufficiently representative; but how they live! He has put the case for the unathletic boy with convincing truth. He depicts, too, very faithfully, the curious _camaraderie_ which prevails nowadays between boys and masters, and pokes mordant fun at the sycophancy which this state of things breeds in a certain type of boy--the "Oh, sir! and No, sir! and Yes, sir! and Please, sir!" brigade--and deals faithfully with the master who takes advantage of out-of-school intimacy to be familiar and offensive in school, addressing boys by their nicknames and making humorous reference to extra-scholastic incidents. And above all Mr. Kipling knows the heart of a boy. He understands, above all men, a boy's intense reserve upon matters that lie deepest within him, and his shrinking from and repugnance to unrestrained and blatant discussion of these things. Do you remember the story of the fat man--"the jelly-bellied flag-flapper"--who came down to lecture to the school on patriotism? "Now the reserve of a boy is tenfold deeper than the reserve of a maid, she having been made for one end only by blind Nature, but man for several. With a large and healthy hand he tore down these veils, and trampled them under the well-intentioned feet of eloquence. In a raucous voice he cried aloud little matters, like the hope of Honour and the dream of Glory, that boys do not discuss with their most intimate equals.... He profaned the most secret places of their souls with outcries and gesticulations. He bade them consider the deeds of their ancestors, in such fashion that they were flushed to their tingling ears. Some of them--the rending voice cut a frozen stillness--might have had relatives who perished in defence of their country. (They thought, not a few of them, of an old sword in a passage, or above a breakfast-table, seen and fingered by stealth since they could walk.) He adjured them to emulate those illustrious examples; and they looked all ways in their extreme discomfort. "Their years forbade them even to shape their thoughts clearly to themselves. They felt savagely that they were being outraged by a fat man who considered marbles a game.... What, in the name of everything caddish, was he driving at, who waved this horror before their eyes?" It was a Union Jack, you will remember, suddenly unfurled by way of peroration.