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Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

"Plain Tales from the Hills"

If the
Empress be not responsible to her Maker--if there is no Maker for
her to be responsible to--the entire system of Our administration
must be wrong. Which is manifestly impossible. At Home men are to
be excused. They are stalled up a good deal and get intellectually
"beany." When you take a gross, 'beany" horse to exercise, he
slavers and slobbers over the bit till you can't see the horns.
But the bit is there just the same. Men do not get "beany" in
India. The climate and the work are against playing bricks with
words.
If McGoggin had kept his creed, with the capital letters and the
endings in "isms," to himself, no one would have cared; but his
grandfathers on both sides had been Wesleyan preachers, and the
preaching strain came out in his mind. He wanted every one at the
Club to see that they had no souls too, and to help him to
eliminate his Creator. As a good many men told him, HE undoubtedly
had no soul, because he was so young, but it did not follow that
his seniors were equally undeveloped; and, whether there was
another world or not, a man still wanted to read his papers in
this.


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