'"

There is here just that blend of simplicity and incalculable darkness
found in all Mr Kipling's native tales. If the premises of life in
India are tortuous, conduct and reasoning are as naively innocent as a
problem in geometry.

It follows that, when the devils are out of the story, no story
breathes more delightfully of Eden than a story of the East. The white
side of the black story of Imray Sahib is shown in _Kim_, and in all
the hints and small studies for _Kim_ that preceded Mr Kipling's best
of all Indian tales.

But _Kim_ is something of a paradox. It is the best of all Indian
tales by virtue of qualities which have little to do with India. It is
an Indian book only upon its least important side. It is true that Kim
himself is upon one side the most cunning of Mr Kipling's studies of
the meeting of East and West; but that, for us, is not his final merit.
It is the final merit of Kim to be first cousin of Mowgli, the child of
the Jungle. His first claim to our delight in him is that he is the
quickest of young creatures, his senses sharp and clean, of a
conscience untroubled, of a spirit that rejoices in nimble work, of a
will in which loyalty and courage and the peace of self-confidence are
firmly rooted. In a word, he is Mowgli among men.

Here, however, we approach _Kim_ merely as a tale of India--as a link
artfully used by Mr Kipling to connect and pass in review the whole
pageant of Imperial India as it is revealed to Western eyes--priests,
peasants, soldiers, civilians, people of the plains and hills, women of
the latticed palanquin and the bazaar, Hindu and Mohammedan, Afghan and
Bengali. The picture of the Grand Trunk Road in Kim is an almost
unsurpassed piece of descriptive writing. The diversity of the picture
dazzles and bewilders us at first. Then out of all this diversity
there gradually comes a conviction that fundamentally India is
unimaginably simple at heart in spite of her medley of religions and
conquests and races; that it is precisely this simplicity which baffles
the intruder. There is the simplicity of Bahadur Khan, whose child was
bewitched: _therefore_ he killed Imray Sahib and hid his body behind
the ceiling cloth. There is the simplicity of the hunter of Daoud
Shah, whose house was dishonoured: _therefore_ he killed his wife and
went upon the trail of her seducer. There is the simplicity of men who
starve and are burnt with the sun: _therefore_ they deprecate the