A Kipling Anthology Author:Rudyard Kipling Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3FURTHER EAST MINOR ARTISTS had worked with Kano the magnificent. These had been allowed to lay brush upon panels of wood in the outer verandahs, and very faithfully had they toiled. It ... more »was not till the guide called my attention to them that I discovered scores of sketches in monochrome low down on the verandah doors. An iris broken by the fall of a branch torn off by a surly ape ; a bamboo spray bowed before the wind that was ruffling a lake ; a warrior of the past ambushing his enemy in a thicket, hand on sword, and mouth gathered into puckers of intensest concentration, were among the many notes that met my eye. How long, think you, would a sepia-drawing stand without defacement in the midst of our civilisation were it put on the bottom panel of a door, or the scantling of a kitchen - passage ? Yet in this gentle country a man may stoop down and write his name in the very dust, certain that, if the writing be craftily done, his children's children will reverently let it stand. textit{From Sea to Sea. JAPAN IS a great people. Her masons play with stone, her carpenters with wood, her smiths with iron, and her artists with life, death, and all the eye can take in. Mercifully she has been denied the last touch of firmness in her character which would enable her to play with the whole round world. We possess that—We, the nation of the glass flower-shade, the pink worsted mat, the red and green china puppy dog, and the poisonous Brussels carpet. It is our compensation. textit{From Sea to Sea. r IN HIS own land, I believe, the Chinaman is treated with a certain amount of carelessness, not to say ferocity. Where he hides his love of Art, the Heaven that made him out of the yellow earth that holds so much iron onlyknows. His love is for little things, or else why should he get quaint pendants for...« less