open to myriad influences that quicken and give colour to the
imagination.

In the spring of 1868 he was taken by his mother for a visit to
England, and there, in the same year, his sister was born. In the next
year his mother returned to India with both her children, and the
boy's next two years were spent at and near Bombay.

He was a friendly and receptive child, eager, interested in all the
various entertaining aspects of life in a city which, "gleaning all
races from all lands," presents more diversified and picturesque
varieties of human condition than any other, East or West. A little
incident which his mother remembers is not without a pretty allegoric
significance. It was at Nasik, on the Dekhan plain, not far from
Bombay: the little fellow trudging over the ploughed field, with his
hand in that of the native husbandman, called back to her in the
Hindustani, which was as familiar to him as English, "Good-bye, this
is my brother."

In 1871 Mr. and Mrs. Kipling went with their children to England, and
being compelled to return to India the next year, they took up the
sorrow common to Anglo-Indian lives, in leaving their children "at
home," in charge of friends at Southsea, near Portsmouth. It was a
hard and sad experience for the boy. The originality of his nature and
the independence of his spirit had already become clearly manifest,
and were likely to render him unintelligible and perplexing to
whosoever might have charge of him unless they were gifted with
unusual perceptions and quick sympathies. Happily his mother's sister,
Mrs. (now Lady) Burne-Jones, was near at hand, in case of need, to
care for him.

In the spring of 1877 Mrs. Kipling came to England to see her
children, and was followed the next year by her husband. The children
were removed from Southsea, and Rudyard, grown into a companionable,
active-minded, interesting boy, now in his thirteenth year, had the
delight of spending some weeks in Paris, with his father, attracted
thither by the exhibition of that year. His eyesight had been for some
time a source of trouble to him, and the relief was great from
glasses, which were specially fitted to his eyes, and with which he
has never since been able to dispense.

On the return of his parents to India, early in 1878, Rudyard was
placed at the school of Westward Ho, at Bideford, in Devon. This
school was one chiefly intended for the sons of members of the Indian
services, most of whom were loo