THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES OF RUDYARD KIPLING: 440+ Tales in One Edition. Rudyard Kipling

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      Chapter 1.

       A Real Live City

       Table of Contents

      We are all backwoodsmen and barbarians together — we others dwelling beyond the Ditch, in the outer darkness of the Mofussil. There are no such things as Commissioners and heads of departments in the world, and there is only one city in India. Bombay is too green, too pretty, and too stragglesome; and Madras died ever so long ago. Let us take off our hats to Calcutta, the many-sided, the smoky, the magnificent, as we drive in over the Hughli Bridge in the dawn of a still February morning. We have left India behind us at Howrah Station, and now we enter foreign parts. No, not wholly foreign. Say rather too familiar.

      All men of a certain age know the feeling of caged irritation — an illustration in the Graphic, a bar of music or the light words of a friend from home may set it ablaze — that comes from the knowledge of our lost heritage of London. At Home they, the other men, our equals, have at their disposal all that Town can supply — the roar of the streets, the lights, the music, the pleasant places, the millions of their own kind, and a wilderness full of pretty, fresh-coloured Englishwomen, theatres and restaurants. It is their right. They accept it as such, and even СКАЧАТЬ