Rudyard Kipling

1865 - 1936

      I find that I am constantly surprised at what I don't  know, or perhaps, better said, by what I don't bother to find out. Growing up, I enjoyed watching the animated versions of The Jungle Book and Riki Tiki Tavi. My brother loved them even more then I did. Being so young, it never occurred to me that those stories had to come from somewhere. A kid does not look for "Based on a story by..." in the credits. They just want to watch the action parts again and don't care who wrote the story. But eventually we have a way of stumbling over things and they stick in our minds after that. In reading a collection of speeches, I read of all things a Eulogy. It was given by Winston Churchill for one of his lifelong favorite authors and friends....Rudyard Kipling. And the stories I had enjoyed as a separately as a child were named side by side as the work of one man. I was recently able to pass this along to my brother in the form of a Christmas gift. A two volume set of Kipling's works with book marks conveniently at the start of these two stories. As of yet I have not been able to read much more from him, but look forward to letting him give me a bit of a rest from some of the more serious material I tend to read.

           "There have been in our own time greater poets and sages, more vehement and sentient interpreters of pathos and passion, more fertile stylists then Rudyard Kipling. But in the glittering rank which he took by right Divine there has never been anyone like him. No one has ever written like Kipling before, and his work, with all it's characteristics and idiosyncrasies, while it charmed and inspired so many, has been successfully imitated by none. He was unique and irreplacable.

      The light of Genius expressed in literautre does not fail with the death of the author. His galleries are still displayed for our instruction and enjoyment. But the magic key which could have opened new ones to our eager desire has gone forever. Let us, then, guard the treasures which he has bequeathed."

                    ----- Winston Churchill, 1937