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Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

"Plain Tales from the Hills"


THEN Nafferton really unmasked his batteries! He complained to the
Government, in stately language, of "the paucity of help accorded to
me in my earnest attempts to start a potentially remunerative
industry, and the flippancy with which my requests for information
are treated by a gentleman whose pseudo-scholarly attainments should
at lest have taught him the primary differences between the
Dravidian and the Berkshire variety of the genus Sus. If I am to
understand that the letter to which he refers me contains his
serious views on the acclimatization of a valuable, though possibly
uncleanly, animal, I am reluctantly compelled to believe," etc.,
etc.
There was a new man at the head of the Department of Castigation.
The wretched Pinecoffin was told that the Service was made for the
Country, and not the Country for the Service, and that he had better
begin to supply information about Pigs.
Pinecoffin answered insanely that he had written everything that
could be written about Pig, and that some furlough was due to him.
Nafferton got a copy of that letter, and sent it, with the essay on
the Dravidian Pig, to a down-country paper, which printed both in
full.


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