MR. RTJDYARD KIPLING'S SEW STORIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14223, 20 November 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

MR. RTJDYARD KIPLING'S SEW STORIES.

"ACTIONS AND REACTIONS."

Out of the eight stories of which Mr. Rud--ard Kipling's new volume is composed there are three'or four which afford admirable examples of the author's imaginative power. And there is one which must be classed amongst the best things which Mr. Kipling has ever done-the, extraordinary ■ vivid sketch which he entitles "With the Night Mail." The scene is laid in 20W A D when man has already achieved the conquest of the air. and when postal packets are run in even- direction round the globe at incredible speed, at various heights up to 6000 ft. PosFal Packet No. 162 is about to start with the night, mail for Quebec, from the Highgate Receiving and Despatching Towers. The old G.P.O. contracts allow twelve hours for the run from London to Quebec, but, as we arc told, these contacts are going to be revised, for any good packet can easily make the journey in ten hours. Indeed, when it seems that a mile can be done in 16s. or 18s., this pace Is not incredible. As a matter of fact, one of the dreams of the aerial navigators of 2000 A.D. is to be equal in pace, so to , sneak, with the sun, to turn all earth into the Vale of Ajalon. "So far, the dawn can be dragged out to twice its normal length, but some day, even on the Equator we shall hold the sun level in his tull striae " Just as the packet is leaving for Quebec the lights indicate that the Bombay mail is arriving. "It is forty minutes late." remarks one of the characters, just as though that minute fraction of time in a journey which now occupies nearly three weeks constituted a very serious derelictiou of duty. " A volt-flurry." The Quebec Mail Packet goes up to the level of air reserved for speed P°Jf l vessels, swinging its way across the Atlantic, ; while the°author gives us an abundance of ; detail about the machinery, and inventions never before heard of, such as an extraordinary "Fleury's Ray," ™th » + matter-of-fact directness which makes the whole thine not merely plausible, but absolutely veracious. The voyagers in the apper levels with a derelict, which they nave tc salvage or destroy. They talk with a mark boat, which represent, 'the' embodied wisdom of the A. B. C, or. Aerial Board of Control, and then thev go through a splendid storm, a "volt flurry," m the course of which they fly up and + <?°™- a one memorable moment negotiating a loUUlt drop at 55 degrees-before thev , reach the receiving towers at Quebec. This is .an astonishing bit of work owing to -the sheer imaginative genius of its creator. lne artifice of it is obvious, depending larply on Mr. Kipling's power of slinging (there is no other word) scientific and technical expressions at us, based, no doubt, on the discoveries of the day, but ; going much further into all kinds of abstract,: regions. And we even find advertisements describing Safety wear for aeronauts, or appliances for aeroplanes, or accessories for dirigible balloons—for all the world as though aerial journeys, the ultimate goal of our aspirations, were easy and accompusned facts. ;■' ;■';■;'.' -""'""-''-.^' BKES AND j' DOGS. .-■■•'•' ' : '; r ,H;Mr- :

"With the Night Mail" is the best of what Mr." Kipling gives us. But he has other things almost as good There is an admirable- sketch called "The Mother Hive," in which we learn the experiences of a young worker bee, called Melissa. The hive to which she belongs has got into - a disorderly condition.f The* Queen Bee-is hardly up to her work. The spirit of revolt is abroad, very largely due to the intrusion of the wax moth. The course of the spreading sedition and misrule, is pictured before our eyes in a fashion which makes the reader feel the keenest sympathy, with the little republic struggling.against the fatel elements of chaos. In " Garm—a Hostage," •we have a curiously interesting eludv of a dog—a dog whom a soldier, in a burst of gratitude to a benefactor, gives awavirtand finds that he has given away the 'better part of his life. , The dog is, as heart-broken as his master, although perfectly loyal to his new home; and we are as glad as Garm is when,' at the end, he is taken up to the hills (the ' scene r of. the story is lafd in India) and restored to his soldier friend. , And this is, perhaps, the opportunity for saying something of , what, in recent volumes, we have been accustomed to expect—the poems with which Mr. Kipling - adorns and enforces the moral of his little sketches. At the end of A each piece there is a poem. They are of varying degrees of excellence, but certainly one of .the best is that 4 added to the story of "Garm—a Hostage." The verses are entitled "The Power of the Dog," 'and two of these may be quoted: — '

When the fourteen years which Nature permits Are closing in aisttuna, or tumour, or fit*. And the. vet's prescription runs To lethal chambers or loaded guns, . : , Then you will And—it's your own affair,. But.,, . you've given your heart to a dog to tear. ""■.''.'''.'' '■',' ' ■-; ;'! ■-' ;'*

When the body that lived at your single will, When "the whimper of welcome is stilled (now - •;■ still!). • ' " '•','•" • •" ' J , ■When the spirit that answered your every mood Is gone—wherever it goes—for good, ..; Ton will discover, how much you care, * ■•'."■' And will give your heart to a dog to tear! . / So utterly and i unreservedly does Rudyard Kipling understand the mysterious links j ' which bind dog and man in the closest j friendship. ' . ' - THE CALL OP THE OLD COUNTRY. The first of the collection, also, is an admirable 6tory, called "An Habitation Enforced," full of >hat quality which meets us now and again in Mr.; Kipling's work— a tenderness, a softness, not always congenial to his rough-and-ready methods, but all the more affecting, as springing from so hard a soil. It is the quality which makes s "The Jungle Book" so precious an addition to our modern literature, with that -wonderful chapter when little Mowgli feels himself so absolutely alone in ; the springtime. '■■ He has lived with the animals and been their friend, but when the spring comes the whole animal world is transformed by the passion \of love, and Mowgli is left solitary. Or it is the same quality - which 'meets us in the extraordinary sketch entitled "They"— intimate comprehension of the widowed heart of a spinster lady, who, because she has no children of her own, has the power to summon to ' her side little ghost children to. keep her company. In the present story, *"*•" An Habitation Enforced," the principal characters are an over-worked and brokendown American financier, .George Chapin, and his wife, Sophie. The American financier, accustomed to the boldest operations on Bourses and Stock Exchanges, ends by becoming a simple English country gentleman, loving the slow ways of the villagers, finding—what the whole story is meant to enforce—that the Old Country, the: old home, draws him with an attractive power that cannot be denied. . And, as usual, Mr. Kipling enforces the moral with a poem: -

I am the land of their fathers, ; In me the virtue stays, ~, r "'■.-■ I will bring hack my children' . • After certain days. Under their feet in the grasses . My clinging magic runs. -They shall return as strangers, ; . They shall remain as sons. : * Apart from the stories to which reference has been made, there is not much that need detain us. If any reader, in a hurry, j anxious to "skim, without the expenditure of s much time,' the real cream of "Actions and. Reactions," will peruse the first half of the volume, he will have got the best ■that Mr. Kipling has to give him. Most vivid of all in the new collection of stories remains "With the Night 1 Mail," which, like "The Ship , that Found Herself" and P& the " Ode to Machinery,** proves once again • Mr. Kipling's I extraordinary > skill in so realising the material conditions ■ of our life ' that they seem, to be consciously alive, . and possessed, of * a human souL ;"'?'■.