Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/164

ling's mind. But while it is true that he is no dreamer of Arcady, it is also true that one cannot read his child-sketches without discovering in them a sub-current, a minor note of almost womanly tenderness. It is a pathetic touch and exquisitely delicate. Is there to be found any other "mere man" who could have written "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep"? or "His Majesty the King"? And then there are the child-chapters of "The Light That Failed," and that rare thing, "The Brushwood Boy." And which of us can follow to the grave (respectfully and at a distance, so that we may not intrude) little Muhammed Din, and not gulp hard to keep back a tear? For we, too, have folded baby-fingers that made gardens of dust and dead flowers, and the heart of a child is the same on whichsoever shore of the Seven Seas he builds his sand houses, and to what grave we carry him.

Kipling knows his children as he knows his soldiers, his animals, his engines, and when he half startles us with a statement like this: "The reserve of a boy is tenfold deeper than the reserve of a maid," it is only the ignorant of us who laugh.

"Only women," he says, "understand children properly; but if a mere man keeps very quiet and humbles himself properly and refrains from talking down to his superiors, the children will sometimes be good to him and let him see what they think about the world."