e traditions. Even into the steam-laden
speech of his locomotives has he breathed our life, our spirit, our
significance. As he is our mouthpiece, so are they his mouthpieces. And
the romance of the nineteenth-century man as he has thus expressed
himself in the nineteenth century, in shaft and wheel, in steel and
steam, in far journeying and adventuring, Kipling has caught up in
wondrous songs for the future centuries to sing.

If the nineteenth century is the century of the Hooligan, then is Kipling
the voice of the Hooligan as surely as he is the voice of the nineteenth
century. Who is more representative? Is _David Harum_ more
representative of the nineteenth century? Is Mary Johnston, Charles
Major, or Winston Churchill? Is Bret Harte? William Dean Howells?
Gilbert Parker? Who of them all is as essentially representative of
nineteenth-century life? When Kipling is forgotten, will Robert Louis
Stevenson be remembered for his _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, his
_Kidnapped_ and his _David Balfour_? Not so. His _Treasure Island_ will
be a classic, to go down with _Robinson Crusoe_, _Through the
Looking-Glass_, and _The Jungle Books_. He will be remembered for his
essays, for his letters, for his philosophy of life, for himself. He
will be the well beloved, as he has been the well beloved. But his will
be another claim upon posterity than what we are considering. For each
epoch has its singer. As Scott sang the swan song of chivalry and
Dickens the burgher-fear of the rising merchant class, so Kipling, as no
one else, has sung the hymn of the dominant bourgeoisie, the war march of
the white man round the world, the triumphant paean of commercialism and
imperialism. For that will he be remembered.

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.
_October_ 1901.

THE OTHER ANIMALS

American journalism has its moments of fantastic hysteria, and when it is
on the rampage the only thing for a rational man to do is to climb a tree
and let the cataclysm go by. And so, some time ago, when the word
_nature-faker_ was coined, I, for one, climbed into my tree and stayed
there. I happened to be in Hawaii at the time, and a Honolulu reporter
elicited the sentiment from me that I thanked God I was not an authority
on anything. This sentiment was promptly cabled to America in an
Associated Press despatch, whereupon the American press (possibly annoyed
because I had not climbed down out of my tree) charged me with paying for
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