Kipling’s wit

I’m delighted by Kipling’s ghost tale “The Phantom Rickshaw”. The tale is exceptionally well-structured, takes place in his beloved India, and I have to remark that the prose is clever, amusing and pleasant (such is the blessing of Kipling’s writings). Further, Kipling’s humor is very keen and critic. Take, for example, this sentence:

The weather in India is often sultry, and since the tale of bricks is always a fixed quantity, and the only liberty allowed is permission to work overtime and get no thanks, men occasionally break down and become as mixed as the metaphors in this sentence.

Or this other extract:

When he recovered I suggested that he should write out the whole affair from beginning to end, knowing that ink might assist him to ease his mind. When little boys have learned a new bad word they are never happy till they have chalked it up on a door. And this also is Literature.

And the perpetual persistence of Mrs Keith-Wessington, reducing her problems with ill-fated Jack Pansay to a “hideous mistake” seems very funny to me 😀 The full tale may be read here.