was a literary man, and was greatly impressed when he learned that one
of the company, who was under twenty-five and was called the Infant,
had killed people somewhere in Burma. He was suddenly caught by an
immense enthusiasm for the active life--the sort of enthusiasm which
sedentary authors feel. Eustace Cleever ended the night riotously with
youngsters who had helped to govern and extend the Empire; and he
returned from their company incoherently uttering a deep contempt for
art and letters.

But Eustace Cleever was being observed by the First Person Singular of
Mr Kipling's tale. This receiver of confidences perceived what was
happening, and he has the last word of the story:


"Whereby I understood that Eustace Cleever, decorator and colourman in
words, was blaspheming his own Art and would be sorry for this in the
morning."


We have here an important clue to Mr Kipling and his work. Mr Kipling
writes of the heroic life. He writes of men who do visible and
measurable things. His theme has usually to do with the world's work.
He writes of the locomotive and the engineer; of the mill-wheel and the
miller; of the bolts, bars and planks of a ship and the men who sail
it. He writes, in short, of any creature which has work to do and does
it well. Nevertheless we must not be misled into thinking that because
Mr Kipling glorifies all that is concrete, practical, visible and
active he is therefore any the less purely and utterly a literary man.
Mr Kipling seems sometimes to write as an engineer, sometimes as a
soldier. At times we would wager that he had spent all his life as a