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    Kim
    Kim
    Kim
    Ebook374 pages17 hours

    Kim

    By Rudyard Kipling

    4/5

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    According to Wikipedia: "Kim is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning English author Rudyard Kipling. It was first published serially in McClure's Magazine from December 1900 to October 1901 as well as in Cassell's Magazine from January to November 1901, and first published in book form by Macmillan & Co. Ltd in October 1901. The story unfolds against the backdrop of The Great Game, the political conflict between Russia and Britain in Central Asia. It is set after the Second Afghan War which ended in 1881, but before the Third, probably in the period 1893 to 1898. The novel is notable for its detailed portrait of the people, culture, and varied religions of India. "The book presents a vivid picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the bazaars and the road."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSeltzer Books
    Release dateMar 1, 2018
    ISBN9781455353941
    Author

    Rudyard Kipling

    Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865. After intermittently moving between India and England during his early life, he settled in the latter in 1889, published his novel The Light That Failed in 1891 and married Caroline (Carrie) Balestier the following year. They returned to her home in Brattleboro, Vermont, where Kipling wrote both The Jungle Book and its sequel, as well as Captains Courageous. He continued to write prolifically and was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 but his later years were darkened by the death of his son John at the Battle of Loos in 1915. He died in 1936.

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    Reviews for Kim

    4/5

    1,175 ratings61 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I know a lot of people really like this book, but for some reason I have never been able to make it through the whole thing. I read a little bit and then lose interest. Maybe someday I will give it another try.
    • 4/5
      An adventurous buddy/road tale set in the teeming infinitude of colonial India. I was worried about it being ruined by Kipling’s colonialist paternalism, but it seems like, while in his head he was an imperialist, his heart was with the colonized. Beautifully and expansively told and described.
    • 5/5
      In many ways I think this is the perfect book. First of all, who can resist Kim, himself? A Sahib street-child turned servant to a holy man and at the same time a player in the international intrigue of India in the 1800s, with a lama, a horse trader, a physician/magician, and an entire British regiment as his friends. Politics, spirituality, acceptance, wisdom from all sources......it was just a pleasure to read this book!
    • 3/5
      Kim is a tale of spies and espionage, which I normally love, but I found the English vernacular difficult to follow and I think over-the-top, which made it a bit of a chore to read rather than pure enjoyment. The story itself is exciting and I did enjoy Kipling's passion for India, where he was born and raised, and its people. In this novel, he truly celebrates the rich diversity, sights, sounds and flavors of the country.
    • 5/5
      A great story about British India. A book like this deserves to be called a classic. The plot involves, Kim, an orphaned boy in Lahore who meets with amazing adventures after falling in with a Tibetan lama in search of a mystical river.
    • 5/5
      "must" reading for anyone living in 2007. Besides the wonderful content, there is Kipling's minimal style, which I love: beautifully crafted sentences with something left for the reader to put in.
    • 3/5
      I hoped the longer I read this, the easier it would become. You know once I got a feel for the writing style, well that never happened for me. Half the time I wasn’t sure who was talking to whom or even what they were talking about. I think I should have just watched Errol Flynn in the movie
    • 5/5
      Kim is a story of a young street beggar who becomes involved in the international intrique surrounding England's control of India. Nicknamed, "Friend of all the world," Kim is charming, savvy, resourceful, and smart. As a street beggar he can slip in and out of nearly any environment without attracting attention. Ignored by those with power and importance, he makes the perfect spy—and he loves the game.

      This book has everything: adventure, mystery, even spirituality. One of the subplots involves Kim's relationship with a Tibetan holy man who is seeking a legendary arrow that will lead to enlightenment and salvation. The intertwining of the transcendent spirituality with the gritty reality of Indian street life is handled perfectly by Kipling. It's a beautiful book that is fun, fun, fun on every page.
    • 2/5
      I missed Kim when I was reading Kipling as a kid. I really like this, part spy and adventure story, part spiritual quest. There is something soothing about how Kipling writes, and he writes such great and real characters, full of flaws and charm.
    • 5/5
      I read this as a child and still enjoyed it later when I read it as an adult. I think Kipling is grossly misunderstood as being responsible for promulgating the concept of "the white man's burden." A book to read if you want to read another in the same vein is Kunzru's _The Impressionist_ (Kunzru actually quotes from _Kim_ quite a bit in his book.) - a _Kim_ for adults.
    • 4/5
      This is a book I read many years ago and enjoyed, and I think being a teenager helped my enjoyment. Re-reading as an adult, and with more knowledge of the world changes my view a bit, though a lot of the issues I had were more to do with the era of the book rather than the actual story itself.Yes there are very few female characters of note. Yes it's a time when the British Raj were in charge in India and one of their major issues was the possible incursion of Russia or France (or Russia and France) from Afghanistan. But still this story of an Irish orphan being trained to do work for the powers that be as part of the Great Game played by people in order to manage the country. His ability to be different people helps the situation immensely. I must say that as a kid I enjoyed the adventure but now I enjoyed the details and having just read the Skull Mantra the difference in acceptance of Tibetan monks and the casual way in which the imperial system is accepted as being for the "betterment" of the "natives" is an interesting look into the past.
    • 2/5
      This is my dad's favorite book and he has been telling me to read this one for years. I loved the relationship aspect of this story. Kim's attachment to the Lama and vice-versa is truly inspiring. I also loved Kim's resourcefulness, he takes any situation and comes out on top. I understand now why my dad has to go back every few years to read it.
    • 5/5
      I'm hard put to explain why I like this novel so much, except that it makes India come alive to me. The travellers on the road, the men of the Hills, the Lama and all the other characters live and breathe.
    • 5/5
      While it is not politically correct, this book is a wonderful story of adventure, spirituality and coming-of-age set against Kipling's backdrop of India. I always enjoy it each time I re-read it.
    • 5/5
      [Kim] by [[Rudyard Kipling]] I first read this book about 40 years ago in my teens. I found it confusing and hard to understand: Kipling used dialect and a lot of Indian and British vocabulary. I also was more focused on plot than the descriptive sections.Forty years later I read it again and thought it was one of the best books I've read all year. It is a "coming of age" yarn, with deep background on British ruled India, the relationships between various Indian cultures, and the ruling British. For the 21st century American reader, what is striking about Kim's tale is how little material benefits are considered valuable; rather, it is the quality of one's work that is prized by the British and the Indians alike. There is no political correctness in the book: various cultures strengths and weaknesses are depicted and the English do not come out as the most noble of the group. That is all background. For the plot, Kim, an Irish solder's orphan (Kimball O'Hara), lives on the streets of India, passing as a Indian. What may be missed by Americans is that at the time, this was rather counter cultural of Kipling to make the hero an Irish lad. Kim's nickname is "Friend of All the World", for he befriends all, but is taken in by none. Then he gets involved in intelligence work with the British foreign service while accompanying an aged Tibetan lama.By all means read this book, and enjoy it.
    • 4/5
      Kim is an orphaned Irish boy, who has grown up under the care of an Indian woman. He's lived in the streets all his life, running amok just as the other Indian boys do, with little knowledge or care that he is white. When he meets a holy man, a lama on a quest to achieve enlightenment by bathing in a certain river, he is fascinated and decides to become the lama's apprentice. Together, as they walk the roads of India and meet many people, Kim also gets himself wrapped up in British espionage. This was a fun little romp that very much reminded me of the many adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, except on the roads of India instead of the riverside of the South. I don't know nearly enough about the intricate nature of India's many cultures to know where Kipling got it right and where he screwed it. Since Kipling grew up in India himself, it makes sense that he drew on his own experiences while writing. I'm sure there's a certain amount of Orientalizing and stereotyping going on, but not how much. In his favor though, Kipling seems to present most of the characters in multiple layers and to treat much of the events as entirely normal, while most Westerners would consider them strange. In some cases, he also flips to show how Indians and the lama are perceived through the white man's lens. For example, the lama, who is seen as a holy man to all the native peoples around him, is seen as just another dirty beggar to the white men. However, the fact remains that the British are clearly the good guys and colonialism is presented as, if not a good thing, then at least not a problem. Also, whenever "magic" came into play within the story, I kind of cringed a bit as it seemed to be the greatest indication of stereotyping the "mysterious and magical East".There are also some spiritual aspects to the book, as presented through the lama and his peaceful quest. He teaches Kim about the wheel of life and how everyone is tied to the wheel, how the body is illusion and he wishes to escape from illusion. This is mixed with the assemblage of Hindu and Muslim people and customs they meet along the road, all of which is very interesting (though again, I can't properly judge how much is accurate). On the whole, I enjoyed it quite a bit from an adventure standpoint with some reservations in regards to other aspects.
    • 5/5
      Kim is another of those books that comes with a great deal of baggage: some of it reasonable, some not. It would be great to be able to say simply "this is a great adventure story" and enjoy it on its own terms, but I think the reader has to be aware of at least some of the assumptions Kipling is asking us to make about the world. Penguin clearly don't want us to enjoy the book at all, as their Penguin Modern Classics edition comes with a rather depressing introductory essay and some tediously pedantic notes by the late Edward Said.Is it a great spy story? I don't think so - although I heard Dame Stella Rimington, who may be presumed to know a thing or two about spying in India, talking it up as such on the BBC the other day. Whilst Kim's training with Lurgan Sahib is plausible, Kim's big success against the French and Russian agents is a direct consequence of their incompetence - if they'd taken any sensible precautions against counter-espionage at all, Kim and his friends would never have been able to foil their dastardly plans. Some of the tradecraft Kim is taught seems a bit suspect too - what intelligence organisation would be daft enough to give all of its agents a common recognition signal? One traitor would be enough to blow the whole organisation.Is it a handbook for military adventures on the North-West frontier? If that's how it is being used, it might explain the current lack of progress of NATO forces in Afghanistan. Anyone who's read Peter Hopkirk's books knows that by the time Kim was written, the danger of Russian incursions into India and Afghanistan, if it ever existed, was long past. There was, as there always has been, unrest among some of the Muslim communities in the area, but Kipling doesn't tell us anything about that. Kipling's view of the Great Game is a fantasy, and probably has more to do with the costly and unsuccessful colonial war of the moment (South Africa) than with India.Is it a primer in basic Buddhism? Probably not. There is no coherent explanation of what Buddhists actually believe, or why. We do get glimpses of the way the lama's religious beliefs help him to deal with concrete situations, but we are led to attribute his qualities to his own strength of character, as much as to his Buddhism. He is really a kind of generic holy man - he would be just as plausible if he were a Baptist or a Benedictine.Is it imperialist? Yes, of course it is. Kipling was firmly convinced that it was the duty of the British to run India, because he felt that they could do a better job than anyone else. This was a minority view (especially in Britain itself), but it was considered a perfectly respectable political standpoint at the time, and Kipling at least had some experience of the realities of colonial India from his time as a journalist. Said is right, of course, to draw attention to the way that Kipling selectively shows us Indians who support the British Raj, and ignores other viewpoints.Is it racist? Certainly, although the passages Said draws attention to are mostly just evidence of a failure to distinguish between racial and cultural characteristics, which is common to most writers of the period. Kipling compensates for this laziness to a large extent by the way the two most important Indian characters, Mahbub Ali and the Babu, are drawn as individuals who transcend racial stereotypes (in fact, both of them are conscious of the way Europeans stereotype them, and exploit this perception for their own ends). However, in the case of Kim, we have someone who as grown up to all intents and purposes in an Indian cultural environment, having lost his European parents at a very young age, but who nevertheless has a special destiny because of his racial origins. I don't think we can absolve Kipling of racism on this point: on the other hand, it is an assumption Kipling pushes so far into the foreground that I don't see how any modern reader of the book could fail to be conscious of it: it's simply a point that we have to accept as one of the underlying assumptions of the book. Is it a great novel? Yes, of course! Kipling wasn't very successful with the novel in general, but this is the one place where he produced a full length novel that can stand up with the best of them. Interestingly, Said chooses to compare Kim side-by-side not with other adventure stories, but with Hardy's Jude the obscure, making the point that most novels of the period were about frustrated hopes and ambitions, but that the freedom of movement offered by a colonial setting allowed Kipling to write a novel about possibilities seized and opportunities exploited. Hardy can be put side-by-side with Kipling in other ways too: both were fascinated by the voices of ordinary working people, and produced rich, if idealised, views of traditional societies confronted by the modern age. You can certainly imagine Mahbub Ali the horse trader doing business with Michael Henchard the corn merchant. It's probably not a huge exaggeration to say that Hardy's rural Wessex would have been as remote and exotic as Kipling's India to the average urban middle-class reader in 1901.
    • 3/5
      The strongest impressions I got from this novel were vivid descriptions of India and the wide variety of people who lived in there in the late 19th century. Told from the perspective of Kim, an orphan of Irish descent on his own in this vast land, he quickly embarks on an adventure by joining a holy man, a lama, as his disciple, and traveling through a diverse landscape. This book is good reading for anyone interested in British India.
    • 5/5
      Published in 1901, Kim by Rudyard Kipling has rightly become a beloved classic over the years. Possessing all the ingredients needed for a grand adventure story, this tale goes a step further with it’s wondrous descriptive writing and it’s close look at the India Kipling knew so well. To this is added well defined and interesting characters and a bitter-sweet coming of age plot line. The story revolves around Kimball O’Hara who, at the beginning of the story, is living as a native orphan on the streets of Lahore. He meets and makes an instant connection with a wandering lama from Tibet. Together they embark upon a journey, both spiritual and actual. Travelling the crowded rails and dusty roads of India, meeting many interesting people along the way. Kim becomes the lamas disciple or “chela” and his love and respect for the older man grows. That these feelings are returned is obvious as well. Eventually Kim meets up with a company of soldiers from his father’s Irish Regiment who take him under their wing. With his ability to blend into the native population, he soon finds himself involved in “The Great Game” as a British agent. High adventure indeed, but for me it was the detailed descriptions of India, the sights, the smells and the people that made this book special. From the crowded marketplace to the dusty plains, Kipling’s colourful writing brings India to life. Kim is a book that I can see reading over and over again as I believe every read would give you a different perspective. Truly a classic.
    • 4/5
      My first Kipling since "The Jungle Book" so many years ago, and not at all what I was expected. As a child, I adored "The Jungle Book", but as an adult I put Kipling firmly into the imperialist/racist category, and expected his work to be mostly imperialist blather. It's not that at all; what really stands out in "Kim", as many other reviewers have noted, is Kipling's passion for India with all its kaleidoscope of peoples, religions, languages, and everything else. A lot of it, of course, does sound imperialist to a 21rst century ear. "Kim" appeared in 1901, and he doesn't question the right of the "sahibs" to rule India. But in the context of the time, some of his attitudes seem remarkably non-imperialist. Some of the least sympathetic characters in the book are British, including a Church of England minister, who, upon meeting Tibetan holy man "looked at him with the triple-ringed uninterest of the creed that lumps nine-tenths of the world under the title 'heathen' " Kipling is not "uninterested" in anything about India; he revels in it in what one reviewer termed "Orientalism". That's a fair criticism, but I don't think that it means that one should forego Kipling. I will certainly read more, after having read "Kim".
    • 3/5
      I've struggled for a long time to make up my mind about this book, and I think I'll struggle on for a while longer too. Is it rank British Imperialism? Or a sweetly bitter tale of a boy's coming of age? It's hard to tell; the description of India is romantic and evocative enough to make the journey intriguing though, if nothing else.
    • 3/5
      You can almost smell the spices of India. Wonderfully descriptive and exotically native.
    • 4/5
      Kim O'Hara is an orphan, living in the streets of Lahore, India like countless other unfortunate children. So dark is his skin from his prolonged exposure to the elements, that he has no notion at all that he is a 'sahib', a term used to designate a white man. He meets an elderly Buddhist monk who is on a mission to find the mythical river that has sprouted at the place where Buddha's arrow struck long ago, and Kim decides he must accompany the man and be his disciple, so he can beg for food for and shelter for the frail sage. Kim has his own destiny to fulfill: he must find a red bull in a green field, which will reveal to him great truths. And so the young boy and the old man embark on a long journey together that will take Kim from childhood to the life of an educated young man who is of great use as an agent of the British army, which seeks to keep a firm grasp on it's colonies with the use of spies as on of it's weapons. There are many sympathetic characters along the journey and it's a gripping adventure. But though our protagonist goes through a fascinating journey, I failed to be fully drawn into this story, as in the back of my mind there remained the insistent thought that through it all, Kippling might be upholding colonialism as an ideal and I often wondered whether the author considered the natives in the story fully as human beings or was rather parodying regional stereotypes. For example, with the Buddhist sage's continual references to 'The Way' and 'The Wheel', which must have seemed novel ideas to a Western readership at the beginning of the 20th century, was Kippling simply trying to teach Eastern Philosophy to his readers, or was he using the man's constant proselytizing in mockery? This is a book which would probably profit from a group reading to allow the opportunity for discussion on these matters.
    • 2/5
      Kipling was a very popular author during his life (1865-1936), and Kim (1901) was arguably written at the peak of his career. It tells the story of an orphaned son of an Irish soldier traveling through India, and Kipling was certainly experienced enough to write the tale, having lived there from 1882 to 1889. As the introduction to this volume says, “Kipling’s view of life is a deeply pessimistic one. Not only is man, as he once put it, at war with his surroundings in a world that does not care, but that world itself is without intrinsic order: chaos and anarchy constitute its true moral reality.” What better place for this worldview than India, with its harshness, diversity, and chaos. In the story, Kim meets an aged lama and becomes his disciple, and throughout the book there is a duality between Kim’s humanistic love with the lama spiritual love. The fundamental message Kipling imparts to us is that this duality can never be “resolved” and will always exist. The novel takes place during what is referred to as “The Great Game”, that is, the political conflict between Russia and Britain in Central Asia at this time, and there is a similar “earthly” duality between this tension and the better instincts of humanity that is also shown to be unending. Today Kipling stands for the imperialism of the age and he’s controversial today for having written “The White Man’s Burden” (ugh) two years earlier, but it is not for that Kim didn’t resonate with me. Kim was “ok” as an adventure story, “ok” as a cultural study of India, and “ok” relative to insights into spirituality or the human condition … but not strong enough at any of these for me to recommend it. I think it’s a bit overrated.Quotes:On religion:"Thou art beyond question an unbeliever, and therefore thou wilt be damned. So says my Law - or I think it does. But thou art also my Little Friend of all the World, and I love thee. So says my heart. This matter of creeds is like horseflesh. The wise man knows horses are good - that there is a profit to be made from all; and for myself - but that I am a good Sunni and hate the men of Tira - I could believe the same of all the Faiths.”“Bennett looked at him with the triple-ringed uninterest of the creed that lumps nine-tenths of the world under the title of ‘heathen’.”On eating, and different cultures:“Certain things are not known to those who eat with forks. It is better to eat with both hands for a while. Speak soft words to those who do not understand this…”
    • 3/5
      Kim is the classic tale of a young orphan boy who grows up in the streets of colonial India. Although Kim survives as a street urchin, he is the son of an Irish officer and is a mishmash of his British ancestry and his Indian upbringing. Throughout this book, Kim is torn between his two nationalities. Once it is discovered that he is a white English boy, he is sent to school to be educated and eventually become part of the 'Great Game' or the espionage plot between England and the other European power houses. At the same time, Kim meets a Tibetan Lama and wants to accompany him as his servant on his quest for enlightenment. Kim is miraculously able to do both and his travels take him through much of India and the Himalayas.

      The descriptions of Colonial India were the best part of this book. Definitely, it was a crossroads for many cultures that all seemed to work well together and coexist peacefully. Also, the amazing friendship that Kim develops with the old Tibetan Lama was sweet and touching. But, this book is on quite a few of the notable 'books you MUST read' lists including, 1001 Books to Read Before You Die, Modern Library and the Radcliffe List. For me the book was sweet and even memorable, but not quite earth shattering.
    • 3/5
      I'd never read Kim or, in fact, anything by Rudyard Kipling before. I've been told that Kipling is the "poster boy" supporting colonialism, as well as racist so I started this book with some trepidation. It would be nice to be able to say simply "this is a story of a great quest" and enjoy it on its own terms, but I think we have to be aware of at least some of the assumptions Kipling is asking us to make about the world. While I noted some references that are clearly racist (especially by today's standards), I could live with those because most major characters, of all races, were presented as multi-dimensional human beings. What was harder for me to accept is the way the author, and his characters, refuse to consider any challenges to the status quo of colonialism. In Kim himself, we have someone who has grown up in an Indian cultural environment, having lost his European parents at a very young age, but who nevertheless has a special destiny because of his racial origins. I don't think we can absolve Kipling of racism on this point.The debate on whether to continue to read Kipling has a parallel in today's debate over the naming of schools after our first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. As Senator Murray Sinclair said in a CBC Radio interview, I think it is important to understand and learn from history. That is why we must read Kim as a product of its time, not as a product of today. That is why it is better to use Kim (and Kipling) as a launching pad for discussion of our history and how it influences our present rather than hiding them in a dark closet. I enjoyed Kim as a character. His character is pulled in opposite directions which parallels the broader geopolitical situation around him. But as a story, Kim was, at best, adequate. The part of the book dealing with espionage was juvenile. I strongly preferred the part dealing with Kim's relationship and quest with the lama.Mr. Kipling's writes well; his descriptions are fantastic, and I really felt like I was on the train with Kim and the lama.On balance, there are good points: the writing, the rich detail of Indian culture, Kim himself and his search for his identity, the quest story. There are also bad points: the colonialism for sure, and the plot, especially the spy story, left something to be desired.
    • 1/5
      I usually enjoy books about Europe's colonial past and this author seemed to be in a privileged position to render here a memorable account. Certainly the descriptions of India are very thorough - but the writing style was too dense and absolutely positively utterly boring... I didn't manage more than 40 pages, I think...
    • 5/5
      As enchanting as I remembered, and given his attitudes toward the British Empire, surprisingly open-minded about India and its inhabitants. Unlike some writers who just trafficked in exoticism and Orientalism, Kipling took the time to flesh out his native characters (who are often more clued-in than several of the supercilious but supremely ignorant Westerners). Kim is a wonderful creation, curious, cheeky and savvy beyond his years, and I loved joining him on his adventures throughout a country I know too little about. I'm glad Kipling didn't write more Kim stories, as it might have diluted the uniqueness of this one -- but I'm also sorry he didn't, because I wasn't ready for it to end!
    • 3/5
      A boyish adventure: Kim, the son of an Irish soldier, is orphaned in India and brought up by an Indian foster mother of dubious moral standing, left only with his father’s army papers (which he cannot read) and an assurance which he cannot understand but takes for a prophecy, relating to the return of the regiment and the help it would bring. He is therefore a Sahib, but brought up as a Hindu and well-versed in all the street wisdom of the bazaar. He takes up with a Tibetan lama on pilgrimage and leaves to travel the country. They come across the regiment and Kim is taken up to be educated as a Sahib, finally joining a secret service whose aims he does not understand or particularly care about, interested only in spying as a great Game. Blah blah.It's well written - just a bit blokey for my tastes.
    • 5/5
      Kipling is under-appreciated these days. Kim is a wonderful book which I have read a few times now, and had to keep. :) Like Haggard, Kipling wrote about "the Great Game." Spy stuff early on, and overlaid with the gentle story of the Tibetan Monk on his way to his forever home. These old guys from the turn of the 20th century could write - many of them wrote so well and always lucidly and with a vocabulary that they used in even the pulp fiction of the day (Example - Sax Rohmer stuff). It is an extraordinary pleasure to read a well written book.

    Book preview

    Kim - Rudyard Kipling

    XV

    Chapter I

    O ye who tread the Narrow Way

    By Tophet-flare to judgment Day,

    Be gentle when 'the heathen' pray

    To Buddha at Kamakura!

    Buddha at Kamakura.

    He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam  Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher -  the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that 'fire-breathing dragon', hold the  Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the   conqueror's loot.

    There was some justification for Kim - he had kicked Lala  Dinanath's boy off the trunnions - since the English held the  Punjab and Kim was English. Though he was burned black as any  native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his  mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he  consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the  bazar; Kim was white - a poor white of the very poorest. The  half-caste woman who looked after him (she smoked opium, and  pretended to keep a second-hand furniture shop by the square  where the cheap cabs wait) told the missionaries that she was  Kim's mother's sister; but his mother had been nursemaid in a  Colonel's family and had married Kimball O'Hara, a young colour- sergeant of the Mavericks, an Irish regiment. He afterwards took  a post on the Sind, Punjab, and Delhi Railway, and his Regiment  went home without him. The wife died of cholera in Ferozepore,  and O'Hara fell to drink and loafing up and down the line with  the keen-eyed three-year-old baby. Societies and chaplains,  anxious for the child, tried to catch him, but O'Hara drifted  away, till he came across the woman who took opium and learned  the taste from her, and died as poor whites die in India. His  estate at death consisted of three papers - one he called his 'ne  varietur' because those words were written below his signature  thereon, and another his 'clearance-certificate'. The third was  Kim's birth-certificate. Those things, he was used to say, in his  glorious opium-hours, would yet make little Kimball a man. On no  account was Kim to part with them, for they belonged to a great  piece of magic - such magic as men practised over yonder behind  the Museum, in the big blue-and-white Jadoo-Gher - the Magic  House, as we name the Masonic Lodge. It would, he said, all come  right some day, and Kim's horn would be exalted between pillars -  monstrous pillars - of beauty and strength. The Colonel himself,  riding on a horse, at the head of the finest Regiment in the  world, would attend to Kim - little Kim that should have been  better off than his father. Nine hundred first-class devils,  whose God was a Red Bull on a green field, would attend to Kim,  if they had not forgotten O'Hara - poor O'Hara that was gang- foreman on the Ferozepore line. Then he would weep bitterly in  the broken rush chair on the veranda. So it came about after his  death that the woman sewed parchment, paper, and birth- certificate into a leather amulet-case which she strung round  Kim's neck.

    'And some day,' she said, confusedly remembering O'Hara's  prophecies, 'there will come for you a great Red Bull on a green  field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and'  dropping into English - 'nine hundred devils.'

    'Ah,' said Kim, 'I shall remember. A Red Bull and a Colonel on a  horse will come, but first, my father said, will come the two men  making ready the ground for these matters. That is how my father  said they always did; and it is always so when men work magic.'

    If the woman had sent Kim up to the local Jadoo-Gher with those  papers, he would, of course, have been taken over by the  Provincial Lodge, and sent to the Masonic Orphanage in the Hills;  but what she had heard of magic she distrusted. Kim, too, held  views of his own. As he reached the years of indiscretion, he  learned to avoid missionaries and white men of serious aspect who  asked who he was, and what he did. For Kim did nothing with an  immense success. True, he knew the wonderful walled city of  Lahore from the Delhi Gate to the outer Fort Ditch; was hand in  glove with men who led lives stranger than anything Haroun al  Raschid dreamed of; and he lived in a life wild as that of the  Arabian Nights, but missionaries and secretaries of charitable  societies could not see the beauty of it. His nickname through  the wards was 'Little Friend of all the World'; and very often,  being lithe and inconspicuous, he executed commissions by night  on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of  fashion. It was intrigue, - of course he knew that much, as he  had known all evil since he could speak, - but what he loved was  the game for its own sake - the stealthy prowl through the dark  gullies and lanes, the crawl up a waterpipe, the sights and  sounds of the women's world on the flat roofs, and the headlong  flight from housetop to housetop under cover of the hot dark.  Then there were holy men, ash-smeared fakirs by their brick  shrines under the trees at the riverside, with whom he was quite  familiar - greeting them as they returned from begging-tours,  and, when no one was by, eating from the same dish. The woman who  looked after him insisted with tears that he should wear European  clothes - trousers, a shirt and a battered hat. Kim found it  easier to slip into Hindu or Mohammedan garb when engaged on  certain businesses. One of the young men of fashion - he who was  found dead at the bottom of a well on the night of the earthquake  had once given him a complete suit of Hindu kit, the costume  of a lowcaste street boy, and Kim stored it in a secret place  under some baulks in Nila Ram's timber-yard, beyond the Punjab  High Court, where the fragrant deodar  logs lie seasoning after  they have driven down the Ravi. When there was business or frolic  afoot, Kim would use his properties, returning at dawn to the  veranda, all tired out from shouting at the heels of a marriage  procession, or yelling at a Hindu festival. Sometimes there was  food in the house, more often there was not, and then Kim went  out again to eat with his native friends.

    As he drummed his heels against Zam-Zammah he turned now and  again from his king-of-the-castle game with little Chota Lal and  Abdullah the sweetmeat-seller's son, to make a rude remark to the  native policeman on guard over rows of shoes at the Museum door.  The big Punjabi grinned tolerantly: he knew Kim of old. So did  the water-carrier, sluicing water on the dry road from his goat- skin bag. So did Jawahir Singh, the Museum carpenter, bent over  new packing-cases. So did everybody in sight except the peasants  from the country, hurrying up to the Wonder House to view the  things that men made in their own province and elsewhere. The  Museum was given up to Indian arts and manufactures, and anybody  who sought wisdom could ask the Curator to explain.

    'Off ! Off ! Let me up!' cried Abdullah, climbing up ZamZammah's  wheel.

    'Thy father was a pastry-cook, Thy mother stole the ghi" sang  Kim. 'All Mussalmans fell off Zam-Zammah long ago!'

    'Let me up!' shrilled little Chota Lal in his gilt-embroidered  cap. His father was worth perhaps half a million sterling, but  India is the only democratic land in the world.

    'The Hindus fell off Zam-Zammah too. The Mussalmans pushed them  off. Thy father was a pastry-cook -'

    He stopped; for there shuffled round the corner, from the roaring  Motee Bazar, such a man as Kim, who thought he knew all castes,  had never seen. He was nearly six feet high, dressed in fold upon  fold of dingy stuff like horse-blanketing, and not one fold of it  could Kim refer to any known trade or profession. At his belt  hung a long open-work iron pencase and a wooden rosary such as  holy men wear. On his head was a gigantic sort of tam-o'-shanter.  His face was yellow and wrinkled, like that of Fook Shing, the  Chinese bootmaker in the bazar. His eyes turned up at the corners  and looked like little slits of onyx.

    'Who is that?' said Kim to his companions.

    'Perhaps it is a man,' said Abdullah, finger in mouth, staring.

    'Without doubt.' returned Kim; 'but he is no man of India that I  have ever seen.'

    'A priest, perhaps,' said Chota Lal, spying the rosary. 'See! He  goes into the Wonder House!'

    'Nay, nay,' said the policeman, shaking his head. 'I do not  understand your talk.' The constable spoke Punjabi. 'O Friend of  all the World, what does he say?'

    'Send him hither,' said Kim, dropping from Zam-Zammah,  flourishing his bare heels. 'He is a foreigner, and thou art a  buffalo.'

    The man turned helplessly and drifted towards the boys. He was  old, and his woollen gaberdine still reeked of the stinking  artemisia of the mountain passes.

    'O Children, what is that big house?' he said in very fair Urdu.

    'The Ajaib-Gher, the Wonder House!' Kim gave him no title - such  as Lala or Mian. He could not divine the man's creed.

    'Ah! The Wonder House! Can any enter?'

    'It is written above the door - all can enter.'

    'Without payment?'

    'I go in and out. I am no banker,' laughed Kim.

    'Alas! I am an old man. I did not know.' Then, fingering his  rosary, he half turned to the Museum.

    'What is your caste? Where is your house? Have you come far?' Kim  asked.

    'I came by Kulu - from beyond the Kailas - but what know you?  >From the Hills where' - he sighed - 'the air and water are fresh  and cool.'

    'Aha! Khitai [a Chinaman],' said Abdullah proudly. Fook Shing had  once chased him out of his shop for spitting at the joss above  the boots.

    'Pahari [a hillman],' said little Chota Lal.

    'Aye, child - a hillman from hills thou'lt never see. Didst hear  of Bhotiyal [Tibet]? I am no Khitai, but a Bhotiya [Tibetan],  since you must know - a lama - or, say, a guru in your tongue.'

    'A guru from Tibet,' said Kim. 'I have not seen such a man. They  be Hindus in Tibet, then?'

    'We be followers of the Middle Way, living in peace in our  lamasseries, and I go to see the Four Holy Places before I die.  Now do you, who are children, know as much as I do who am old.'  He smiled benignantly on the boys.

    'Hast thou eaten?'

    He fumbled in his bosom and drew forth a worn, wooden begging- bowl. The boys nodded. All priests of their acquaintance begged.

    'I do not wish to eat yet.' He turned his head like an. old  tortoise in the sunlight. 'Is it true that there are many images  in the Wonder House of Lahore?' He repeated the last words as one  making sure of an address.

    'That is true,' said Abdullah. 'It is full of heathen buts.  Thou  also art an idolater.'

    'Never mind him,' said. Kim. 'That is the Government's house and  there is no idolatry in it, but only a Sahib with a white beard.  Come with me and I will show.'

    'Strange priests eat boys,' whispered Chota Lal.

    'And he is a stranger and a but-parast [idolater],' said  Abdullah, the Mohammedan.

    Kim laughed. 'He is new. Run to your mothers' laps, and be safe.  Come!'

    Kim clicked round the self-registering turnstile; the old man  followed and halted amazed. In the entrance-hall stood the larger  figures of the Greco-Buddhist sculptures done, savants know how  long since, by forgotten workmen whose hands were feeling, and  not unskilfully, for the mysteriously transmitted Grecian touch.  There were hundreds of pieces, friezes of figures in relief,  fragments of statues and slabs crowded with figures that had  encrusted the brick walls of the Buddhist stupas and viharas of  the North Country and now, dug up and labelled, made the pride of  the Museum. In open-mouthed wonder the lama turned to this and  that, and finally checked in rapt attention before a large alto- relief representing a coronation or apotheosis of the Lord  Buddha. The Master was represented seated on a lotus the petals  of which were so deeply undercut as to show almost detached.  Round Him was an adoring hierarchy of kings, elders, and old-time  Buddhas. Below were lotus-covered waters with fishes and water- birds. Two butterfly-winged dewas held a wreath over His head;  above them another pair supported an umbrella surmounted by the  jewelled headdress of the Bodhisat.

    'The Lord! The Lord! It is Sakya Muni himself,' the lama half  sobbed; and under his breath began the wonderful Buddhist  invocation:

    To Him the Way, the Law, apart, Whom Maya held beneath her heart,  Ananda's Lord, the Bodhisat.

    'And He is here! The Most Excellent Law is here also. My  pilgrimage is well begun. And what work! What work!'

    'Yonder is the Sahib.' said Kim, and dodged sideways among the  cases of the arts and manufacturers wing. A white-bearded  Englishman was looking at the lama, who gravely turned and  saluted him and after some fumbling drew forth a note-book and a  scrap of paper.

    'Yes, that is my name,' smiling at the clumsy, childish print.

    'One of us who had made pilgrimage to the Holy Places - he is now  Abbot of the Lung-Cho Monastery - gave it me,' stammered the  lama. 'He spoke of these.' His lean hand moved tremulously round.

    'Welcome, then, O lama from Tibet. Here be the images, and I am  here' - he glanced at the lama's face - 'to gather knowledge.  Come to my office awhile.' The old man was trembling with  excitement.

    The office was but a little wooden cubicle partitioned off from  the sculpture-lined gallery. Kim laid himself down, his ear  against a crack in the heat-split cedar door, and, following his  instinct, stretched out to listen and watch.

    Most of the talk was altogether above his head. The lama,  haltingly at first, spoke to the Curator of his own lamassery,  the Such-zen, opposite the Painted Rocks, four months' march  away. The Curator brought out a huge book of photos and showed  him that very place, perched on its crag, overlooking the  gigantic valley of many-hued strata.

    'Ay, ay!' The lama mounted a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles of  Chinese work. 'Here is the little door through which we bring  wood before winter. And thou - the English know of these things?  He who is now Abbot of Lung-Cho told me, but I did not believe.  The Lord - the Excellent One - He has honour here too? And His  life is known?'

    'It is all carven upon the stones. Come and see, if thou art  rested.'

    Out shuffled the lama to the main hall, and, the Curator beside  him, went through the collection with the reverence of a devotee  and the appreciative instinct of a craftsman.

    Incident by incident in the beautiful story he identified on the  blurred stone, puzzled here and there by the unfamiliar Greek  convention, but delighted as a child at each new trove. Where the  sequence failed, as in the Annunciation, the Curator supplied it  from his mound of books - French and German, with photographs and  reproductions.

    Here was the devout Asita, the pendant of Simeon in the Christian  story, holding the Holy Child on his knee while mother and father  listened; and here were incidents in the legend of the cousin  Devadatta. Here was the wicked woman who accused the Master of  impurity, all confounded; here was the teaching in the Deer-park;  the miracle that stunned the fire-worshippers; here was the  Bodhisat in royal state as a prince; the miraculous birth; the  death at Kusinagara, where the weak disciple fainted; while there  were almost countless repetitions of the meditation under the  Bodhi tree; and the adoration of the alms-bowl was everywhere. In  a few minutes the Curator saw that his guest was no mere bead- telling mendicant, but a scholar of parts. And they went at it  all over again, the lama taking snuff, wiping his spectacles, and  talking at railway speed in a bewildering mixture of Urdu and  Tibetan. He had heard of the travels of the Chinese pilgrims, Fu- Hiouen and Hwen-Tsiang, and was anxious to know if there was any  translation of their record. He drew in his breath as he turned  helplessly over the pages of Beal and Stanislas Julien. "Tis all  here. A treasure locked.' Then he composed himself reverently to  listen to fragments hastily rendered into Urdu. For the first  time he heard of the labours of European scholars, who by the  help of these and a hundred other documents have identified the  Holy Places of Buddhism. Then he was shown a mighty map, spotted  and traced with yellow. The brown finger followed the Curator's  pencil from point to point. Here was Kapilavastu, here the Middle  Kingdom, and here Mahabodhi, the Mecca of Buddhism; and here was  Kusinagara, sad place of the Holy One's death. The old man bowed  his head over the sheets in silence for a while, and the Curator  lit another pipe. Kim had fallen asleep. When he waked, the talk,  still in spate, was more within his comprehension.

    'And thus it was, O Fountain of Wisdom, that I decided to go to  the Holy Places which His foot had trod - to the Birthplace, even  to Kapila; then to Mahabodhi, which is Buddh Gaya - to the  Monastery - to the Deer-park -to the place of His death.'

    The lama lowered his voice. 'And I come here alone. For five -  seven - eighteen - forty years it was in my mind that the Old Law  was not well followed; being overlaid, as thou knowest, with  devildom, charms, and idolatry. Even as the child outside said  but now. Ay, even as the child said, with but-parasti.'

    'So it comes with all faiths.'

    'Thinkest thou? The books of my lamassery I read, and they were  dried pith; and the later ritual with which we of the Reformed  Law have cumbered ourselves - that, too, had no worth to these  old eyes. Even the followers of the Excellent One are at feud on  feud with one another. It is all illusion. Ay, maya, illusion.  But I have another desire' - the seamed yellow face drew within  three inches of the Curator, and the long forefinger-nail tapped  on the table. 'Your scholars, by these books, have followed the  Blessed Feet in all their wanderings; but there are things which  they have not sought out. I know nothing - nothing do I know -  but I go to free myself from the Wheel of Things by a broad and  open road.' He smiled with most simple triumph. 'As a pilgrim to  the Holy Places I acquire merit. But there is more. Listen to a  true thing. When our gracious Lord, being as yet a youth, sought  a mate, men said, in His father's Court, that He was too tender  for marriage. Thou knobbiest?'

    The Curator nodded, wondering what would come next. 'So they made the triple trial of strength against all comers.  And at the test of the Bow, our Lord first breaking that which  they gave Him, called for such a bow as none might bend. Thou  knowest?'

    'It is written. I have read.'

    'And, overshooting all other marks, the arrow passed far and far  beyond sight. At the last it fell; and, where it touched earth,  there broke out a stream which presently became a River, whose  nature, by our Lord's beneficence, and that merit He acquired ere  He freed himself, is that whoso bathes in it washes away all  taint and speckle of sin.'

    'So it is written,' said the Curator sadly.

    The lama drew a long breath. Where is that River? Fountain of  Wisdom, where fell the arrow?

    'Alas', my brother, I do not know,' said the Curator.

    'Nay, if it please thee to forget - the one thing only that thou  hast not told me. Surely thou must know? See, I am an old man! I  ask with my head between thy feet, O Fountain of Wisdom. We know  He drew the bow! We know the arrow fell! We know the stream  gushed! Where, then, is the River? My dream told me to find it.  So I came. I am here. But where is the River?'

    'If I knew, think you I would not cry it aloud?'

    'By it one attains freedom from the Wheel of Things,' the lama  went on, unheeding. 'The River of the Arrow! Think again! Some  little stream, maybe - dried in the heats? But the Holy One would  never so cheat an old man.'

    'I do not know. I do not know.'

    The lama brought his thousand-wrinkled face once more a  handsbreadth from the Englishman's. 'I see thou dost not know.  Not being of the Law, the matter is hid from thee.'

    'Ay - hidden - hidden.'

    'We are both bound, thou and I, my brother. But I' - he rose with  a sweep of the soft thick drapery - 'I go to cut myself free.  Come also!'

    'I am bound,' said the Curator. 'But whither goest thou?'

    'First to Kashi [Benares]: where else? There I shall meet one of  the pure faith in a Jain temple of that city. He also is a Seeker  in secret, and from him haply I may learn. Maybe he will go with  me to Buddh Gaya. Thence north and west to Kapilavastu, and there  will I seek for the River. Nay, I will seek everywhere as I go -  for the place is not known where the arrow fell.'

    'And how wilt thou go? It is a far cry to Delhi, and farther to  Benares.'

    'By road and the trains. From Pathankot, having left the Hills, I  came hither in a te-rain. It goes swiftly. At first I was amazed  to see those tall poles by the side of the road snatching up and  snatching up their threads,' - he illustrated the stoop and whirl  of a telegraph-pole flashing past the train. 'But later, I was  cramped and desired to walk, as I am used.'

    'And thou art sure of thy road?' said the Curator.

    'Oh. for that one but asks a question and pays money, and the  appointed persons despatch all to the appointed place. That much  I knew in my lamassery from sure report,' said the lama proudly.  'And when dost thou go?' The Curator smiled at the mixture of  old-world piety and modern progress that is the note of India  today.

    'As soon as may be. I follow the places of His life till I come  to the River of the Arrow. There is, moreover, a written paper of  the hours of the trains that go south.'

    'And for food?' Lamas, as a rule, have good store of money  somewhere about them, but the Curator wished to make sure.

    'For the journey, I take up the Master's begging-bowl. Yes. Even  as He went so go I, forsaking the ease of my monastery. There was  with me when I left the hills a chela [disciple] who begged for  me as the Rule demands, but halting in Kulu awhile a fever took  him and he died. I have now no chela, but I will take the alms- bowl and thus enable the charitable to acquire merit.' He nodded  his head valiantly. Learned doctors of a lamassery do not beg,  but the lama was an enthusiast in this quest.

    'Be it so,' said the Curator, smiling. 'Suffer me now to acquire  merit. We be craftsmen together, thou and I. Here is a new book  of white English paper: here be sharpened pencils two and three -  thick and thin, all good for a scribe. Now lend me thy  spectacles.'

    The Curator looked through them. They were heavily scratched, but  the power was almost exactly that of his own pair, which he slid  into the lama's hand, saying: 'Try these.'

    'A feather! A very feather upon the face? The old man turned his  head delightedly and wrinkled up his nose. 'How scarcely do I  feel them! How clearly do I see!

    'They be, bilaur - crystal - and will never scratch. May they  help thee to thy River, for they are thine.'

    'I will take them and the pencils and the white note-book,' said  the lama, 'as a sign of friendship between priest and priest -  and now -' He fumbled at his belt, detached the open-work iron  pincers, and laid it on the Curator's table. 'That is for a  memory between thee and me - my pencase. It is something old -  even as I am.'

    It was a piece of ancient design, Chinese, of an iron that is not  smelted these days; and the collector's heart in the Curator's  bosom had gone out to it from the first. For no persuasion would  the lama resume his gift.

    'When I return, having found the River, I will bring thee a  written picture of the Padma Samthora such as I used to make on  silk at the lamassery. Yes - and of the Wheel of Life,' he  chuckled, 'for we be craftsmen together, thou and I.'

    The Curator would have detained him: they are few in the world  who still have the secret of the conventional brush-pen Buddhist  pictures which are, as it were, half written and half drawn. But  the lama strode out, head high in air, and pausing an instant  before the great statue of a Bodhisat in meditation, brushed  through the turnstiles.

    Kim followed like a shadow. What he had overheard excited him  wildly. This man was entirely new to all his experience, and he  meant to investigate further, precisely as he would have  investigated a new building or a strange festival in Lahore city.  The lama was his trove, and he purposed to take possession. Kim's  mother had been Irish too.

    The old man halted by Zam-Zammah and looked round till his eye  fell on Kim. The inspiration of his pilgrimage had left him for  awhile, and he felt old, forlorn, and very empty.

    'Do not sit under that gun,' said the policeman loftily.

    'Huh! Owl!' was Kim's retort on the lama's behalf 'Sit under that  gun if it please thee. When didst thou steal the milkwoman's  slippers, Dunnoo?'

    That was an utterly unfounded charge sprung on the spur of the  moment, but it silenced Dunnoo, who knew that Kim's clear yell  could call up legions of bad bazar boys if need arose.

    'And whom didst thou worship within?' said Kim affably, squatting  in the shade beside the lama.

    'I worshipped none, child. I bowed before the Excellent Law.'

    Kim accepted this new God without emotion. He knew already a few  score.

    'And what dost thou do?'

    'I beg. I remember now it is long since I have eaten or drunk.  What is the custom of charity in this town? In silence, as we do  of Tibet, or speaking aloud?'

    'Those who beg in silence starve in silence,' said Kim, quoting a  native proverb. The lama tried to rise, but sank back again,  sighing for his disciple, dead in far-away Kulu. Kim watched head  to one side, considering and interested.

    'Give me the bowl. I know the people of this city - all who are  charitable. Give, and I will bring it back filled.'

    Simply as a child the old man handed him the bowl. [start here] 'Rest, thou. I know the people.'

    He trotted off to the open shop of a kunjri, a low-caste  vegetable-seller, which lay opposite the belt-tramway line down  the Motee Bazar. She knew Kim of old.

    'Oho, hast thou turned yogi with thy begging-bowl?' she cried.

    'Nay.' said Kim proudly. 'There is a new priest in the city a man  such as I have never seen.'

    'Old priest - young tiger,' said the woman angrily. 'I am tired  of new priests! They settle on our wares like flies. Is the  father of my son a well of charity to give to all who ask?'

    'No,' said Kim. 'Thy man is rather yagi [bad-tempered] than yogi  [a holy man]. But this priest is new. The Sahib in the Wonder  House has talked to him like a brother. O my mother, fill me this  bowl. He waits.'

    'That bowl indeed! That cow-bellied basket! Thou hast as much  grace as the holy bull of Shiv. He has taken the best of a basket  of onions already, this morn; and forsooth, I must fill thy bowl.  He comes here again.'

    The huge, mouse-coloured Brahmini bull of the ward was  shouldering his way through the many-coloured crowd, a stolen  plantain hanging out of his mouth. He headed straight for the  shop, well knowing his privileges as a sacred beast, lowered his  head, and puffed heavily along the line of baskets ere making his  choice. Up flew Kim's hard little heel and caught him on his  moist blue nose. He snorted indignantly, and walked away across  the tram-rails, his hump quivering with rage.

    'See! I have saved more than the bowl will cost thrice over. Now,  mother, a little rice and some dried fish atop - yes, and some  vegetable curry.'

    A growl came out of the back of the shop, where a man lay.

    'He drove away the bull,' said the woman in an undertone. 'It is  good to give to the poor.' She took the bowl and returned it full  of hot rice.

    'But my yogi is not a cow,' said Kim gravely, making a hole with  his fingers in the top of the mound. 'A little curry is good, and  a fried cake, and a morsel of conserve would please him, I  think.'

    'It is a hole as big as thy head,' said the woman fretfully. But  she filled it, none the less, with good, steaming vegetable  curry, clapped a fried cake atop, and a morsel of clarified  butter on the cake, dabbed a lump of sour tamarind conserve at  the side; and Kim looked at the load lovingly.

    'That is good. When I am in the bazar the bull shall not come to  this house. He is a bold beggar-man.'

    'And thou?' laughed the woman.  'But speak well of bulls. Hast  thou not told me that some day a Red Bull will come out of a  field to help thee? Now hold all straight and ask for the holy  man's blessing upon me. Perhaps, too, he knows a cure for my  daughter's -sore eyes. Ask. him that also, O thou Little Friend  of all the World.'

    But Kim had danced off ere the end of the sentence, dodging  pariah dogs and hungry acquaintances.

    'Thus do we beg who know the way of it,' said he proudly to the  lama, who opened his eyes at the contents of the bowl. 'Eat now  and - I will eat with thee. Ohe, bhisti!' he called to the water- carrier, sluicing the crotons by the Museum. 'Give water here. We  men are thirsty.'

    'We men!' said the bhisti, laughing. 'Is one skinful enough for  such a pair? Drink, then, in the name of the Compassionate.'

    He loosed a thin stream into Kim's hands, who drank nativefasion;  but the lama must needs pull out a cup from his inexhaustible  upper draperies and drink ceremonially.

    'Pardesi [a foreigner],' Kim explained, as the old man delivered  in an unknown tongue what was evidently a blessing.

    They ate together in great content, clearing the beggingbowl.  Then the lama took snuff from a portentous wooden snuff-gourd,  fingered his rosary awhile, and so dropped into the easy sleep of  age, as the shadow of Zam-Zammah grew long.

    Kim loafed over to the nearest tobacco-seller, a rather lively  young Mohammedan woman, and begged a rank cigar of the brand that  they sell to students of the Punjab University who copy English  customs. Then he smoked and thought, knees to chin, under the  belly of the gun, and the outcome of his thoughts was a sudden  and

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