"Taking of Lungtung Pen," and the "Drums of the Fore and Aft," and
that other tale of the battle with the Pathans in the gorge, are
among the good fights of fiction. They stir the spirit, and they
should be distributed (in addition, of course, to the "Soldier's
Pocket Book") in the ranks of the British army. Mr. Kipling is as
well informed about the soldier's women-kind as about the soldier:
about Dinah Shadd as about Terence Mulvaney. Lever never instructed
us on these matters: Micky Free, if he loves, rides away; but
Terence Mulvaney is true to his old woman. Gallant, loyal,
reckless, vain, swaggering, and tender-hearted, Terence Mulvaney, if
there were enough of him, "would take St. Petersburg in his
drawers." Can we be too grateful to an author who has extended, as
Mr. Kipling in his military sketches has extended, the frontiers of
our knowledge and sympathy?

It is a mere question of individual taste; but, for my own part, had
I to make a small selection from Mr. Kipling's tales, I would
include more of his studies in Black than in White, and many of his
excursions beyond the probable and natural. It is difficult to have
one special favourite in this kind; but perhaps the story of the two
English adventurers among the freemasons of unknown Kafiristan (in
the "Phantom Rickshaw") would take a very high place. The gas-
heated air of the Indian newspaper office is so real, and into it
comes a wanderer who has seen new faces of death, and who carries
with him a head that has worn a royal crown. The contrasts are of
brutal force; the legend is among the best of such strange fancies.
Then there is, in the same volume, "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie
Jukes," the most dreadful nightmare of the most awful Bunker in the
realms of fancy. This is a very early work; if nothing else of Mr.
Kipling's existed, his memory might live by it, as does the memory