Kipling The Light that Failed

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4553-5392-7
Verlag: Seltzer Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 822 Seiten

Classic Kipling novel. According to Wikipedia: 'Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) was an English author and poet. Born in Bombay, British India (now Mumbai), he is best known for his works The Jungle Book (1894) and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (1902), his novel, Kim (1901); his poems, including Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), If- (1910); and his many short stories, including The Man Who Would Be King (1888). He is regarded as a major 'innovator in the art of the short story'; his children's books are enduring classics of children's literature; and his best works speak to a versatile and luminous narrative gift. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in English, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[2] The author Henry James said of him: 'Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius (as distinct from fine intelligence) that I have ever known.' In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English language writer to receive the prize, and to date he remains its youngest recipient. Among other honours, he was sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, all of which he declined.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kipling, Rudyard

Leseproben

THE LIGHT THAT FAILED BY RUDYARD KIPLING
  published by Samizdat Express, Orange, CT, USA established in 1974, offering over 14,000  books   Books by Rudyard Kipling available from us: Actions and Reactions American Notes Departmental Ditties and Ballads Captains Courageous The Day's Work A Diversity of Creatures France at War Indian Tales The Jungle Book Just So Stories Kim Letters of Travel Life's Handicap, Being Stories of Mine Own People The Light that Failed The Man Who Would Be King Plain Tales from the Hills Puck of Pook's Hill Rewards and Fairies Sea Warfare The Second Jungle Book Soldiers Three Songs from Books Stalky and Company The Story of the Gadsby Traffics and Discoveries Under the Deodars Verses The Years Between   feedback welcome: [e-mail]   visit us at samizdat.com       Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV   CHAPTER I
   So we settled it all when the storm was done  As comf'y as comf'y could be;  And I was to wait in the barn, my dears,  Because I was only three;  And Teddy would run to the rainbow's foot,  Because he was five and a man;  And that's how it all began, my dears,  And that's how it all began. -- Big Barn Stories.    'WHAT do you think she'd do if she caught us? We oughtn't to have it,   you know,' said Maisie.    'Beat me, and lock you up in your bedroom,' Dick answered, without   hesitation. 'Have you got the cartridges?'    "Yes; they're in my pocket, but they are joggling horribly. Do pin-fire   cartridges go off of their own accord?'    'Don't know. Take the revolver, if you are afraid, and let me carry   them.'    "I'm not afraid.' Maisie strode forward swiftly, a hand in her pocket   and her chin in the air. Dick followed with a small pin-fire revolver.    The children had discovered that their lives would be unendurable   without pistol-practice. After much forethought and self-denial, Dick   had saved seven shillings and sixpence, the price of a badly constructed   Belgian revolver. Maisie could only contribute half a crown to the   syndicate for the purchase of a hundred cartridges. 'You can save better   than I can, Dick,' she explained; 'I like nice things to eat, and it   doesn't matter to you. Besides, boys ought to do these things.'    Dick grumbled a little at the arrangement, but went out and made the   purchase, which the children were then on their way to test. Revolvers   did not lie in the scheme of their daily life as decreed for them by the   guardian who was incorrectly supposed to stand in the place of a mother   to these two orphans. Dick had been under her care for six years, during   which time she had made her profit of the allowances supposed to be   expended on his clothes, and, partly through thoughtlessness, partly   through a natural desire to pain,--she was a widow of some years anxious   to marry again,--had made his days burdensome on his young shoulders.    Where he had looked for love, she gave him first aversion and then hate.    Where he growing older had sought a little sympathy, she gave him   ridicule. The many hours that she could spare from the ordering of her   small house she devoted to what she called the home-training of Dick   Heldar. Her religion, manufactured in the main by her own intelligence   and a keen study of the Scriptures, was an aid to her in this matter. At   such times as she herself was not personally displeased with Dick, she   left him to understand that he had a heavy account to settle with his   Creator; wherefore Dick learned to loathe his God as intensely as he   loathed Mrs. Jennett; and this is not a wholesome frame of mind for the   young. Since she chose to regard him as a hopeless liar, but an   economical and self-contained one, never throwing away the least   unnecessary fib, and never hesitating at the blackest, were it only   plausible, that might make his life a little easier. The treatment   taught him at least the power of living alone,--a power that was of   service to him when he went to a public school and the boys laughed at   his clothes, which were poor in quality and much mended. In the holidays   he returned to the teachings of Mrs. Jennett, and, that the chain of   discipline might not be weakened by association with the world, was   generally beaten, on one account or another, before he had been twelve   hours under her roof.    The autumn of one year brought him a companion in bondage, a   long-haired, gray-eyed little atom, as self-contained as himself, who   moved about the house silently and for the first few weeks spoke only to   the goat that was her chiefest friend on earth and lived in the   back-garden. Mrs. Jennett objected to the goat on the grounds that he   was un-Christian,--which he certainly was. 'Then,' said the atom,   choosing her words very deliberately, 'I shall write to my   lawyer-peoples and tell them that you are a very bad woman. Amomma is   mine, mine, mine!' Mrs. Jennett made a movement to the hall, where   certain umbrellas and canes stood in a rack. The atom understood as   clearly as Dick what this meant. 'I have been beaten before,' she said,   still in the same passionless voice; 'I have been beaten worse than you   can ever beat me. If you beat me I shall write to my lawyer-peoples and   tell them that you do not give me enough to eat. I am not afraid of   you.' Mrs. Jennett did not go into the hall, and the atom, after a pause   to assure herself that all danger of war was past, went out, to weep   bitterly on Amomma's neck.    Dick learned to know her as Maisie, and at first mistrusted her   profoundly, for he feared that she might interfere with the small   liberty of action left to him. She did not, however; and she volunteered   no friendliness until Dick had taken the first steps. Long before the   holidays were over, the stress of punishment shared in common drove the   children together, if it were only to play into each other's hands as   they prepared lies for Mrs. Jennett's use. When Dick returned to school,   Maisie whispered, 'Now I shall be all alone to take care of myself;   but,' and she nodded her head bravely, 'I can do it. You promised to   send Amomma a grass collar. Send it soon.' A week later she asked for   that collar by return of post, and wa not pleased when she learned that   it took time to make. When at last Dick forwarded the gift, she forgot   to thank him for it.    Many holidays had come and gone since that day, and Dick had grown into   a lanky hobbledehoy more than ever conscious of his bad clothes. Not for   a moment had Mrs. Jennett relaxed her tender care of him, but the   average canings of a public school--Dick fell under punishment about   three times a month--filled him with contempt for her powers. 'She   doesn't hurt,' he explained to Maisie, who urged him to rebellion, 'and   she is kinder to you after she has whacked me.' Dick shambled through   the days unkempt in body and savage in soul, as the smaller boys of the   school learned to know, for when the spirit moved him he would hit them,   cunningly and with science. The same spirit made him more than once try   to tease Maisie, but the girl refused to be made unhappy. 'We are both   miserable as it is,' said she. 'What is the use of trying to make things   worse? Let's find things to do, and forget things.'    The pistol was the outcome of that search. It could only be used on the   muddiest foreshore of the beach, far away from the bathing-machines and   pierheads, below the grassy slopes of Fort Keeling. The tide ran out   nearly two miles on that coast, and the many-coloured mud-banks, touched   by the sun, sent up a lamentable smell of dead weed. It was late in the   afternoon when Dick...