A KIPLING GAME.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 86, 21 January 1938, Page 3

A KIPLING GAME.

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES. “Let the grown-up people slide, Let’s go hack to half-past three, Finding starfish by a tide, Always new for you and me, AVhispering as you lean more near, Does you love it, sister dear?”

These six lines of a, hitherto unpublished poem by Kipling “to his little sister,” sent with a gift to her shortly before her wed,ding, were quoted at a meeting of the Kipling Society at the AVasliington Hotel, says the “Daily Telegraph and Morning Post.” Mrs Fleming, sister of Kipling, who quoted the verse, recalled memories of when she and her brother lived with their parents at Lahore, between 1884 and 1887. . Kipling himself described this period of his life as “a time when we 'were all happy and we knew it.” She said they used to play a Turkish game called “Yodace.” The rule was that von must never accept anything from a person —not even the salt at the dinner table—without saying first, “By my knowledge.” The Kipling family, said Airs Fleming, played this game for months till it became a nightmare for Air and Airs Kipling. “Rudy would go to all sorts of lengths to catch me out,” she added. “He would even stage an accident, and then call me Jnto the room and say : 'Here, take this,’ hoping 1 would forget the ‘By my knowledge.’ ” Airs Fleming said'that she taught her brother to dance, and on her seventeenth birthday lie gave her a gold bangle in memory of it. He was always a little nervous about steering his partner. Airs Fleming spoke of the unhappiness endured by her brother when, as children, they wore sent Home from India to live at Sonthsen. “I never once lost faith in my brother, and 1 always knew from the very beginning that he would; one day be a genius, she declared.