It was the Kipling of the earlier years of writing who received the Nobel prize. He was forty-two years old, one of the youngest winners. He had already published volumes of prose and verse that would be creditable to a writer of twice his age. Born at Bombay, December 30, 1865, he inherited intellectual promise from both parents. His father, John Lockwood Kipling, an artist, was at that time Director of the Lahore School of Industrial Art. He was a delightful story-teller and expertly trained in technical and artistic knowledge. He illustrated some of his son’s earlier tales; a book by him, entitled _Beast and Man in India_, with unusual drawings, was attributed to Rudyard Kipling (London, 1891). Alice MacDonald, the mother, gave to her son a keen zest in life and a rare sense of humor. Her devotion has had many lines of commemoration, notably in such a poem as “Mother O’ Mine.” The boy was named Joseph Rudyard but he seldom used the first name. The second, in memory of a lake in England where his father and mother had met, is so arresting and unique that it has been called one of the causes of his first appeal to the curious public. After his early boyhood in India, leaving with him strong impressions and love for the land, he was sent to Southsea, Devonshire, to school and later to the United Services College at Westward Ho. He was homesick for his mother and found it difficult to mix well with the English-born boys. _Stalky & Co._ is largely autobiographical of this period. In 1880 he returned to India, anxious to enter journalism and know the native people, especially in the army. The story runs that once, when Kipling was doing journalistic work in Lahore, the Duke of Connaught visited the place and asked the young man what he would prefer to do in India. The reply came promptly, “I would like, sir, to live with the army for a time, and go to the frontier to write up Tommy Atkins.” The request was granted and the literary results in later years are listed in _Department Ditties_, _Soldiers Three_, _Under the Deodars_, and many more stories in volumes, from _Plain Tales from the Hills_ to _Eyes of Asia_. Much discussion has been rife about the truth or exaggeration of Kipling’s pictures of India, especially types of army men and officers’ wives. Many critics, who have traveled in India, affirm the photographic quality of the tales and verse but some raise the issue of the tone--is it sincere or sardonic? Others, who claim to have talked with certain “natives,” condemn both the spirit and the characterizations. To the charge of insincerity or disloyalty there seems to be a firm answer in the friendly Prelude to _Departmental Ditties_, which has a prominent place in the Inclusive Edition of _Rudyard Kipling’s Verse_. He lays stress, in the last stanza, upon “the jesting guise” but he emphasizes, also, his loyalty to these people, especially in the second stanza: