The fort is the center of activity.  The ancient citadel has been adapted to modern uses and conveniences at the expense of its former splendor.  The palaces and mosques, the baths and halls of audience of the Moguls have been converted into barracks, arsenals and storerooms, and their decorations have been covered with whitewash.  The only object of interest that has been left is an armory containing a fine collection of ancient Indian weapons.  But, although the city has lost its medieval picturesqueness, it has gained in utility, and has become the most important educational and industrial center of northern India.  The university and its numerous affiliated schools, the law college, the college of oriental languages and the manual training school are all well attended and important, and the school of art and industry enjoys the reputation of being the most useful and the best-managed institution of the kind in the East, probably in all Asia, which is due to the zeal and ability of J. L. Kipling, father of Rudyard Kipling, who has spent the greater part of his life in making it what it is.  He was also the founder of the museum or “Wonder-House,” as the natives call it.  It has the finest collection of Indian arts and industries in existence except that in South Kensington Museum, which Mr. Kipling also collected and installed.  It was under the carriage of one of the great old-fashioned cannon that stand in front of this museum that “Kim” first encountered the aged Llama, and Kipling’s father is the wise man who kept the “Wonder-House” and gave the weary pilgrim the knowledge and encouragement that sustained him in his search for The Way.

[Illustration:  “Kim,” The chela, and the old lama who sought the way and the trust and the light]

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, where his father was principal of an art school, and was brought to Lahore when he was a child, so that he spent most of his younger life there.  He was educated at the Lahore schools and university; he served for several years as a reporter of the Lahore newspaper, and there he wrote most of his short stories.  “The Plain Tales From the Hills” and the best of his “Barrack-Room Ballads” were inspired by his youthful association with the large military garrison at this point.  Here Danny Deever was hanged for killing a comrade in a drunken passion, and here Private Mulvaney developed his profound philosophy.

Lahore is the principal Protestant missionary center of northern India.  The American Presbyterians are the oldest in point of time and the strongest in point of numbers.  They came in 1849, and some of the pioneers are still living.  They have schools and colleges, a theological seminary and other institutions, with altogether five or six thousand students, and are turning out battalions of native preachers and teachers for missionary work in other parts of India.