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Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

"Plain Tales from the Hills"

That was the fault of his creed. It made men
too responsible and left too much to their honor. You can
sometimes ride an old horse in a halter; but never a colt.
McGoggin took more trouble over his cases than any of the men of
his year. He may have fancied that thirty-page judgments on fifty-
rupee cases--both sides perjured to the gullet--advanced the cause
of Humanity. At any rate, he worked too much, and worried and
fretted over the rebukes he received, and lectured away on his
ridiculous creed out of office, till the Doctor had to warn him
that he was overdoing it. No man can toil eighteen annas in the
rupee in June without suffering. But McGoggin was still
intellectually "beany" and proud of himself and his powers, and he
would take no hint. He worked nine hours a day steadily.
"Very well," said the doctor, "you'll break down because you are
over-engined for your beam." McGoggin was a little chap.
One day, the collapse came--as dramatically as if it had been meant
to embellish a Tract.
It was just before the Rains.


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