Kim (Illustrated edition)

‘Men are like horses. At certain times they need salt, and if that salt is not in the mangers they will lick it up from the earth.

‘Give a woman an old wife’s tale and a weaver-bird a leaf and a thread, they will weave wonderful things,’ said the Sikh.

‘As regards that young horse,’ said Mahbub, ‘I say that when a colt is born to be a polo-pony, closely following the ball without teaching—when such a colt knows the game by divination—then I say it is a great wrong to break that colt to a heavy cart, Sahib!’

No man could be a fool who knew the language so intimately, who moved so gently and silently, and whose eyes were so different from the dull fat eyes of other Sahibs.

‘Learn first—teach later,’ said Lurgan Sahib. ‘Is he thy master?’ ‘Truly. But how is it done?’ ‘By doing it many times over till it is done perfectly—for it is worth doing.’

‘There is no holding the young pony from the game,’ said the horse-dealer when the Colonel pointed out that vagabonding over India in holiday time was absurd. ‘If permission be refused to go and come as he chooses, he will make light of the refusal. Then who is to catch him? Colonel Sahib, only once in a thousand years is a horse born so well fitte

‘Yes, and thou must learn how to make pictures of roads and mountains and rivers—to carry these pictures in thine eye till a suitable time comes to set them upon paper.

‘But why not sit and rest?’ said one of the escort. ‘Only the devils and the English walk to and fro without reason.’

‘The more one knows about natives the less can one say what they will or won’t do.’