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Here are the quotations for the coming week (August 8th to 14th): 1. ...Long before I reached the Gully of the Horsemen, I heard the shouts of the British Infantry crying cheerily: "Hutt, ye beggars! Hutt, ye devils! Get along! Go forward, there!" Then followed the ringing of rifle-butts and shrieks of pain. The troops were banging the bare toes of the mob with their gun-butts - for not a bayonet had been fixed... 2. The clamour might have continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the noise of a shot without that sent every man feeling for his defenceless left side. Then there was a scuffle and a yell of pain. "Carbine-stealing again!" said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in his chair. "This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries have killed him." 3. Five volleys plunged the files in banked smoke impenetrable to the eye, and the bullets began to take ground twenty or thirty yards in front of the firers, as the weight of the bayonet dragged down and to the right arms wearied with holding the kick of the jolting Martini. The sources of last week's extracts (August 1st to 7th) are as follows: 1. (... A solid line of blue, rising and falling like the back of a caterpillar in haste, would swing up through the quivering dust and trot past ... ) This is from Kim. 2. (... he did not once lift his eyes to the mellow landscape around him, or throw a word at the life of the English road which to me is one renewed and unreasoned orgy of delight..) This is from "The Vortex" in A Diversity of Creatures. 3. (... The city thrust more treasure upon me than I could carry away. It came out of dark alleyways on tawny camels loaded with pots ; on pattering asses half buried under nets of cut clover ...) this is from "A Serpent of Old Nile" in Egypt of the Magicians (Letters of Travel), on Kipling's visit to Cairo in 1913, which keenly reminded him of Lahore some twenty-five years before. In the NRG we have recently published notes by John McGivering on "The Conundrum of the Workshops", "The Ballad of the King's Mercy", and "The Ballad of the King's Jest". The last two poems paint a lurid picture of the fearsomely cruel and arbitrary regime of the Amir of Afghanistan, so different from the calm measured administration of justice under the British. But Kipling describes them with a certain relish. Is there irony here, or is this simply the eloquent voice of the observant reporter, who allows circumstances to speak for themselves ? Good wishes to all, John R