yton, Ohio? 'Rah for the Buckeye State. Step
lively! Both gates! Szz! Boom! Aah!' Keller was a Princeton man, and
he seemed to need encouragement.

'You've got me on your own ground,' said he, tugging at his overcoat
pocket. He pulled out his copy, with the cable forms--for he had
written out his telegram--and put them all into my hand, groaning, 'I
pass. If I hadn't come to your cursed country--If I'd sent it off at
Southampton--If I ever get you west of the Alleghannies, if----'

'Never mind, Keller. It isn't your fault. It's the fault of your
country. If you had been seven hundred years older you'd have done
what I am going to do.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Tell it as a lie.'

'Fiction?' This with the full-blooded disgust of a journalist for the
illegitimate branch of the profession.

'You can call it that if you like. I shall call it a lie.'

And a lie it has become; for Truth is a naked lady, and if by
accident she is drawn up from the bottom of the sea, it behoves a
gentleman either to give her a print petticoat or to turn his face to
the wall and vow that he did not see.

MOWGLI'S BROTHERS

Now Chil the Kite brings home the night
That Mang the Bat sets free--
The herds are shut in byre and hut
For loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Talon and tush and claw.
Oh hear the call!--Good hunting all
That keep the Jungle Law!

_Night-Song in the Jungle_.

It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when
Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned,
and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy
feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped
across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the
mouth of the cave where they all lived. 'Augrh!' said Father Wolf,
'it is time to hunt again'; and he was going to spring down hill when
a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined:
'Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves; and good luck and
strong white teeth go with the noble children, that they may never
forget the hungry in this world.'

It was the jackal--Tabaqui, the Dish-licker--and the wolves of India
despise Tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling
tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the village
rubbish-heaps. But t