ed to see the
game.

A baby had been born that evening in the steerage, and it was decided to
inaugurate a small "jack-pot" for the benefit of the mother. All went
well until about the fourth hand, when Bok began to bid higher than had
been originally planned. Kipling questioned the beginner's knowledge of
the game and his tactics, but Bok retorted it was his money that he was
putting into the pot and that no one was compelled to follow his bets if
he did not choose to do so. Finally, the jack-pot assumed altogether too
large dimensions for the party, Kipling "called" and Bok, true to the
old idea of "beginner's luck" in cards, laid down a royal flush! This
was too much, and poker, with Bok in it, was taboo from that moment.
Kipling's version of this card-playing does not agree in all particulars
with the version here written. "Bok learned the game of poker," Kipling
says; "had the deck stacked on him, and on hearing that there was a
woman aboard who read The Ladies' Home Journal insisted on playing after
that with the cabin-door carefully shut." But Kipling's art as a
reporter for The Tonic was not as reliable as the art of his more
careful book work.

Bok derived special pleasure on this trip from his acquaintance with
Father Kipling, as the party called him. Rudyard Kipling's respect for
his father was the tribute of a loyal son to a wonderful father.

"What annoys me," said Kipling, speaking of his father one day, "is when
the pater comes to America to have him referred to in the newspapers as
'the father of Rudyard Kipling.' It is in India where they get the
relation correct: there I am always 'the son of Lockwood Kipling.'"

Father Kipling was, in every sense, a choice spirit: gentle, kindly, and
of a most remarkably even temperament. His knowledge of art, his wide
reading, his extensive travel, and an interest in every phase of the
world's doings, made him a rare conversationalist, when inclined to
talk, and an encyclopedia of knowledge as extensive as it was accurate.
It was very easy to grow fond of Father Kipling, and he won Bok's
affection as few men ever did.

Father Kipling's conversation was remarkable in that he was exceedingly
careful of language and wasted few words.

One day Kipling and Bok were engaged in a discussion of the Boer
problem, which was then pressing. Father Kipling sat by listening, but
made no comment on the divergent views, since, Kipling holding the
English side of the question