The Nobel prize was given to Kipling because of these qualities of his earlier work, as well as his more mature, potent messages. He had, from the first, rare ability to revivify, to secure for future generations of readers the real and the romantic in Anglo-India of the later nineteenth century. He preserved the landscapes, the customs, the ideals, the intrigues, the foibles, even the slang of the natives and the British soldiers. Just as Mistral saved the language and romances of Provence from oblivion, in his _Mireio_ and other poems; just as Björnson recorded the almost forgotten sagas of Norway and blended these with modern, peasant life; so Kipling made literary use of this unfamiliar material of India. His idealism converted the ordinary, often petty and rough aspects of life, into stories and verses of undying flavor, like “The Phantom Rickshaw,” _Soldiers Three_, “Drums of the Fore and Aft,” “On the City Wall,” “M’Andrew’s Hymn,” “Danny Deever,” “Mandalay,” and “The Lover’s Litany.” Here are recorded days of adventure and danger, nights of memory and longing. In 1902, more than ten years after he left India, he wrote one of his most appealing poems, “The Broken Men,” the exiles from England with their pluck and their pathos, which grips the sympathies like those tales of O. Henry about the American self-imposed “exiles” in Central America. The later visit that Kipling made to the United States cheered his heart, in contrast to the earlier reception. He had met Caroline Balestier, sister of Wolcott Balestier, a young man with whom Kipling became intimate in London and with whom he collaborated in the novel, _The Naulahka_. Their home was in Brattleboro, Vermont. In 1892 Miss Balestier was married to Kipling in All Soul’s Church, Portland Place, London. They came to Vermont to live for a few years in the unique house, which Kipling built for his bride overlooking Brattleboro. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle accredits him with “chivalrous devotion” to his wife, which caused him to come to America lest she might miss her home and friends.[61] Before coming to America they took a journey “round the world,” or a segment of it. The death of Wolcott Balestier was a deep grief to his friend and a loss to American literature. In dedicatory elegy (_Barrack-Room Ballads_) Kipling wrote the lines of noble characterization: E’en as he trod that day to God so walked he from his birth, In simpleness and gentleness and honour and clean mirth.[62]