"'Arf a mo, Chawley; let's wait an' see 'im sit down."
BLUDYARD.
Mr. Rudyard Kipling's few remarks, made beneath the blue sky of the Empire at Tunbridge Wells, have not yet lost their effect. The famous orator's letter-bag is daily crowded with communications from total strangers who have striven in vain to resist the impulse to tell him what they think of him and his speech.
"I understand from the local paper that you're an author," writes one correspondent from Haggerston; "if you can write like you can speak, your books ought to sell in hundreds."
"Your speech was quite good," writes another, "so far as it went; the only fault I have to find with it is that it was not strong enough, Sir, not strong enough. The blackguards!"
An envelope of pale purple, gently perfumed, contained that well-known work (now in its tenth thousand), "Gentle Words, and How to Use Them. By Amelia Papp." We understand that the receipt of this famous pamphlet had a tremendous effect upon Mr. Kipling.
The speech has put courage into the heart of a young literary man known to us. "I have long yearned to break away from the weaklings who can do no more than call a spade a spade," he said the other day. "I feel that I now have a master's authority for doing so. In gratitude I can do no less than send Mr. Kipling a copy of my new book, The Seven D's, when it is ready."