and Bok the Dutch side, it followed that
they could not agree. Finally Father Kipling arose and said: "Well, I
will take a stroll and see if I can't listen to the water and get all
this din out of my ears."

Both men felt gently but firmly rebuked and the discussion was never
again taken up.

Bok tried on one occasion to ascertain how the father regarded the son's
work.

"You should feel pretty proud of your son," remarked Bok.

"A good sort," was the simple reply.

"I mean, rather, of his work. How does that strike you?" asked Bok.

"Which work?"

"His work as a whole," explained Bok.

"Creditable," was the succinct answer.

"No more than that?" asked Bok.

"Can there be more?" came from the father.

"Well," said Bok, "the judgment seems a little tame as applied to one
who is generally regarded as a genius."

"By whom?"

"The critics, for instance," replied Bok.

"There are no such," came the answer.

"No such what, Mr. Kipling?" asked Bok.

"Critics."

"No critics?"

"No," and for the first time the pipe was removed for a moment. "A
critic is one who only exists as such in his own imagination."

"But surely you must consider that Rud has done some great work?"
persisted Bok.

"Creditable," came once more.

"You think him capable of great work, do you not?" asked Bok. For a
moment there was silence. Then:

"He has a certain grasp of the human instinct. That, some day, I think,
will lead him to write a great work."

There was the secret: the constant holding up to the son, apparently, of
something still to be accomplished; of a goal to be reached; of a higher
standard to be attained. Rudyard Kipling was never in danger of
unintelligent laudation from his safest and most intelligent reader.

During the years which intervened until his passing away, Bok sought to
keep in touch with Father Kipling, and received the most wonderful
letters from him. One day he enclosed in a letter a drawing which he had
made showing Sakia Muni sitting under the bo-tree with two of his
disciples, a young man and a young woman, gathered at his feet. It was a
piece of exquisite drawing. "I like to think of you and your work in
this way," wrote Mr. Kipling, "and so I sketched it for you." Bok had
the sketch enlarged, engaged John La Farge to translate it into glass,
and inserted it in a window in the living-room of his home at Merion.

After Father Kipling had passed away, the express brought to Bok one day
a b