Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial Practice
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The Tragedy of Crusoe, C.S.
- Twenty Years After
- Dis Aliter Visum
- De Profundis
- The Unlimited “Draw” of “Tick” Boileau
- My Christmas Caller
- The History of a Crime
- Prisoners and Captives
- “From Olympus to Hades”
- “Les Miserables.”
- A Nightmare of Rule
- What Came of It
- An Official Secret
- Le Roi en Exil
- A Scrap of Paper
- The Mystification of Santa Claus
- “Love in Old Cloathes”
- The Case of Adamah
- A Tale of ’98
- A Rather More Fishy Case
- The House of Shadows
- The Confession of an Impostor
- The Judgment of Paris
- Five Days After Date
- The Hill of Illusion
- Le Monde ou L'On S'Amuse
- An Intercepted Letter
- The Recurring Smash
- How Liberty Came to the Bolan
- “Under Sentence”
- The Dreitarbund
- In Memoriam
- On Signatures
- The Great Strike
- “The Biggest Liar in Asia”
- Deputating a Viceroy
- A Merry Christmas
- The New Year's Sermon
- New Year's Gifts
- Mister Anthony Dawking
- “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
- The Wedding Guest
- The Tracking of Chuckerbutti
- “Bread upon the Waters”
- A Free Gift
- A Hill Homily
- The “Kingdom” of Bombay
- Bombaystes Furioso
- A Day Off
- The Unpunishable Cherub
- In Gilded Halls
- “Till the Day Break”
- The Fountain of Honour
- The Burden of Nineveh
- His Natural Destiny
- That District Log-Book
- An Unequal Match
- A Horrible Scandal
- An Exercise in Administration
- My New Purchase
- Exercises in Administration
- The Dignity of It.
- Exercises in Administration
- In Wonderland
- In the Year ’92
- “A Free Hand”
- Susannah and the Elder
- The Coming K
- What the World Said
- An Interesting Condition
- The Comet of a Season
- Gallihauk's Pup
- The Inauthorated Corpses
- One Lady at Wairakei
- The Princess in the Pickle-Bottle
- Why Snow Falls at Vernet
- The Cause of Humanity
- appendices
- Glossary
The Hill of Illusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 November 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial Practice
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The Tragedy of Crusoe, C.S.
- Twenty Years After
- Dis Aliter Visum
- De Profundis
- The Unlimited “Draw” of “Tick” Boileau
- My Christmas Caller
- The History of a Crime
- Prisoners and Captives
- “From Olympus to Hades”
- “Les Miserables.”
- A Nightmare of Rule
- What Came of It
- An Official Secret
- Le Roi en Exil
- A Scrap of Paper
- The Mystification of Santa Claus
- “Love in Old Cloathes”
- The Case of Adamah
- A Tale of ’98
- A Rather More Fishy Case
- The House of Shadows
- The Confession of an Impostor
- The Judgment of Paris
- Five Days After Date
- The Hill of Illusion
- Le Monde ou L'On S'Amuse
- An Intercepted Letter
- The Recurring Smash
- How Liberty Came to the Bolan
- “Under Sentence”
- The Dreitarbund
- In Memoriam
- On Signatures
- The Great Strike
- “The Biggest Liar in Asia”
- Deputating a Viceroy
- A Merry Christmas
- The New Year's Sermon
- New Year's Gifts
- Mister Anthony Dawking
- “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
- The Wedding Guest
- The Tracking of Chuckerbutti
- “Bread upon the Waters”
- A Free Gift
- A Hill Homily
- The “Kingdom” of Bombay
- Bombaystes Furioso
- A Day Off
- The Unpunishable Cherub
- In Gilded Halls
- “Till the Day Break”
- The Fountain of Honour
- The Burden of Nineveh
- His Natural Destiny
- That District Log-Book
- An Unequal Match
- A Horrible Scandal
- An Exercise in Administration
- My New Purchase
- Exercises in Administration
- The Dignity of It.
- Exercises in Administration
- In Wonderland
- In the Year ’92
- “A Free Hand”
- Susannah and the Elder
- The Coming K
- What the World Said
- An Interesting Condition
- The Comet of a Season
- Gallihauk's Pup
- The Inauthorated Corpses
- One Lady at Wairakei
- The Princess in the Pickle-Bottle
- Why Snow Falls at Vernet
- The Cause of Humanity
- appendices
- Glossary
Summary
Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 28 September 1887.
Attribution: Scrapbook 3 (28/3, pp. 145–6).
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Notes: RK used this title twice, to the confusion of the bibliographers. This is the first instance of its use; the second is for a story published in The Week's News, 21 April 1888, and collected in Under the Deodars.
The pseudonym ‘S.T.’ is unexplained; besides its use here, it appears with ‘Jews in Shushan’, CMG, 4 October 1887 (Life's Handicap); ‘The Recurring Smash’, CMG, 13 October 1887 (uncollected); ‘The Dreitarbund’, CMG, 22 October 1887 (uncollected); and ‘The Vengeance of Lal Beg’, CMG, 3 November 1887 (The Smith Administration). No other of RK's many pseudonyms is used in such quick succession – five stories in just over a month. RK may have had some thought of establishing an identity for these initials, but, shortly after the last of the stories signed ‘S.T.’ had appeared, he left Lahore for Allahabad, and never again, so far as is known, made use of ‘S.T.’
The idea that ordinary life embodies the archetypal forms of myth and legend, though with modern twists, was familiar to RK, who never doubted that all stories, no matter how new in appearance, were always old stories. As he wrote of ‘The Man Who Would Be King’, ‘all “King” tales of that kind date back from the tower of Babel’ (to Edward Lucas White, 3 January 1893: Letters, ii, 77); in another letter he wrote that ‘the blessed streets and squares and groves of today are shouting aloud the ancient tragedies’ (to Brander Matthews, 7 February 1905, Letters, iii, 176). See also the poem ‘The Craftsman’ (The Years Between).
‘The Hill of Illusion’ was reprinted in the Kipling Journal, December 2007.
When the Pandavs held their last Council on the summit of aged Jacatala they laid a blessing upon the mountain so honoured; and, though the Pandavs have long since fought their way into Heaven, and a meaner generation has taken possession of Jacatala, defiling it with smoke and sewage, and calling it Jakko, the blessing remains.
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- Information
- The Cause of Humanity and Other StoriesThe Cause of Humanity and Other Stories Uncollected Prose Fictions, pp. 125 - 128Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018