The second year after the great fight with Red Dog and the death of Akela, Mowgli must have been nearly seventeen years old. He looked older, for hard exercise, the best of good eating, and baths whenever he felt in the least hot or dusty, had given him strength and growth far beyond his age. He could swing by one hand from a top branch for half an hour at a time, when he had occasion to look along the tree-roads. He could stop a young buck in mid-gallop and throw him sideways by the head. He could even jerk

In the High and Far-Off Times the Elephant, O Best Beloved, had no trunk. He had only a blackish, bulgy nose, as big as a boot, that he could wriggle about from side to side; but he couldn`t pick up things with it. But there was one Elephanta new Elephantan Elephant`s Childwho was full of `satiable curiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions. And he lived in Africa, and he filled all Africa with his `satiable curiosities. He asked his tall aunt, the Ostrich, why her tail-feathers grew just so, and his tall aunt the Ostrich spanked

In the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel. All the fishes he could find in all the sea he ate with his mouthso! Till at last there was only one small fish left in all the sea, and he was a small `Stute Fish, and he swam a little behind the Whale`s

Now this is the next tale, and it tells how the Camel got his big hump.
In the beginning of years, when the world was so new and all, and the Animals were just beginning to work for Man, there was a Camel, and he lived in the middle of a Howling Desert because he did not want to work; and besides, he was a Howler himself. So he ate sticks and thorns and tamarisks and milkweed and prickles, most `scruciating idle; and when anybody spoke to him he said `Humph!` Just `Humph!` and no more.
Presently the Horse came to him

Once upon a most early time was a Neolithic man. He was not a Jute or an Angle, or even a Dravidian, which he might well have been, Best Beloved, but never mind why. He was a Primitive, and he lived cavily in a Cave, and he wore very few clothes, and he couldn`t read and he couldn`t write and he didn`t want to, and except when he was hungry he was quite happy. His name was Tegumai Bopsulai, and that means, `Man-who-does-not-put-his-foot- forward-in-a-hurry`; but we, O Best Beloved, will call him Tegumai, for short. And his wife`s name was

THE week after Taffimai Metallumai (we will still call her Taffy, Best Beloved) made that little mistake about her Daddy`s spear and the Stranger-man and the picture-letter and all, she went carp-fishing again with her Daddy. Her Mummy wanted her to stay at home and help hang up hides to dry on the big drying-poles outside their Neolithic Cave, but Taffy slipped away down to her Daddy quite early, and they fished. Presently she began to giggle, and her Daddy said, `Don`t be silly, child.`
`But wasn`t it inciting!` said Taffy. `Don`t you remember how the Head Chief puffed out his

IN the days when everybody started fair, Best Beloved, the Leopard lived in a place called the High Veldt. `Member it wasn`t the Low Veldt, or the Bush Veldt, or the Sour Veldt, but the `sclusively bare, hot, shiny High Veldt, where there was sand and sandy-coloured rock and `sclusively tufts of sandy- yellowish grass. The Giraffe and the Zebra and the Eland and the Koodoo and the Hartebeest lived there; and they were `sclusively sandy-yellow-brownish all over; but the Leopard, he was the `sclusivest sandiest-yellowish-brownest of them alla greyish-yellowish catty-shaped kind of beast, and he matched the `sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish

ONCE upon a time, on an uninhabited island on the shores of the Red Sea, there lived a Parsee from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. And the Parsee lived by the Red Sea with nothing but his hat and his knife and a cooking-stove of the kind that you must particularly never touch. And one day he took flour and water and currants and plums and sugar and things, and made himself one cake which was two feet across and three feet thick. It was indeed a Superior Comestible (that`s magic), and he

This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, the Tailorbird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the musk-rat, who never comes out into the middle of the floor, but always creeps round by the wall, gave him advice, but Rikki-tikki did the real fighting.
He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink. He could scratch himself anywhere he pleased

It was seven o`clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day`s rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. “Augrh!” said Father Wolf. “It is time to hunt again.” He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the