But Kim is something of a paradox.  It is the best of all Indian tales by virtue of qualities which have little to do with India.  It is an Indian book only upon its least important side.  It is true that Kim himself is upon one side the most cunning of Mr Kipling’s studies of the meeting of East and West; but that, for us, is not his final merit.  It is the final merit of Kim to be first cousin of Mowgli, the child of the Jungle.  His first claim to our delight in him is that he is the quickest of young creatures, his senses sharp and clean, of a conscience untroubled, of a spirit that rejoices in nimble work, of a will in which loyalty and courage and the peace of self-confidence are firmly rooted.  In a word, he is Mowgli among men.

Here, however, we approach Kim merely as a tale of India—­as a link artfully used by Mr Kipling to connect and pass in review the whole pageant of Imperial India as it is revealed to Western eyes—­priests, peasants, soldiers, civilians, people of the plains and hills, women of the latticed palanquin and the bazaar, Hindu and Mohammedan, Afghan and Bengali.  The picture of the Grand Trunk Road in Kim is an almost unsurpassed piece of descriptive writing.  The diversity of the picture dazzles and bewilders us at first.  Then out of all this diversity there gradually comes a conviction that fundamentally India is unimaginably simple at heart in spite of her medley of religions and conquests and races; that it is precisely this simplicity which baffles the intruder.  There is the simplicity of Bahadur Khan, whose child was bewitched:  therefore he killed Imray Sahib and hid his body behind the ceiling cloth.  There is the simplicity of the hunter of Daoud Shah, whose house was dishonoured:  therefore he killed his wife and went upon the trail of her seducer.  There is the simplicity of men who starve and are burnt with the sun:  therefore they deprecate the wrath of devils and put food in the beggar’s bowl.  There is, above all, the simplicity of clean hunger, thirst, adventure, piety, friendliness and love that threads the whole story of the Lama and his Chela.

Kim is one of the few really beautiful stories in modern literature.  The brain and fancy of thousands of readers to-day are richer and sweeter by that tale of the Master and his Friend of All the World.  We would not leave him and his Wheel of Things, the River he sought in simple faith, the trust he had in the charity of men, the message that bade him seek release in Nirvana from the importunity of life quaintly warring with instinctive gestures of delight and sympathy with all that made life precious—­we would not leave this exquisite story so soon, were it not that it brings forward the imperishable side of Mr Kipling’s work to which we shall have shortly to return. Kim bridges the gap between the Indian stories and The Jungle Book, which means that Kim is all but the top of Mr Kipling’s achievement.