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
- Juvenilia
- Incomplete and Fragmentary Stories
- Stories Doubtfully Attributed
- “Verbatim et Literatim”
- The Minstrel
- A Parable
- Glossary
A Parable
from Stories Doubtfully Attributed
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
- Juvenilia
- Incomplete and Fragmentary Stories
- Stories Doubtfully Attributed
- “Verbatim et Literatim”
- The Minstrel
- A Parable
- Glossary
Summary
Published: Scots Observer, 29 March 1890.
Attribution: Against this title in his annotated copy of Chandler's Summary RK has written: ‘not mine RK’. Livingston (Supplement, 111) says that ‘A Parable’ ‘has been identified as by Kipling’ but gives no reference. This is repeated by Roger Lancelyn Green in the Kipling Journal (October 1950, p. 5) and by Stewart–Yeats, Kipling, p. 541. I have been unable to discover any such identification.
‘A Parable’ is very much in the manner of several of Kipling's stories and poems in which personified groups, institutions, and abstractions engage in comic dialogue (e.g., ‘The Burden of Nineveh’, ‘A Horrible Scandal’, ‘In Wonderland’). Kipling was publishing regularly in William Ernest Henley's Scots Observer at the time ‘A Parable’ appeared, e.g., ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy’ on 15 March, ‘Oonts’ on 22 March, and ‘Loot’ on 29 March. The use of the word ‘skittles’ alone is enough to identify it as Kipling's. But these considerations do not outweigh RK's denial of authorship; ‘A Parable’ remains a doubtful attribution.
Text: Scots Observer.
Note: Reprinted in Harbord, v, 2463–6.
That very terrible deity the God of Things as They Are heard a noise on the floor beneath him, and saw the British Public racing round the room, upsetting the waste-paper basket, clawing the pictures from the walls, and trying to run about on the ceiling, like the fit-afflicted kitten. He is nothing if not “factual,” is the God of Things, etc.; and he has no great regard for the British Public, which is deeply tinctured with sentimentalism, and mostly takes its facts the wrong way. But being a god, he has a clear idea of duty; and tenderly he picked the British Public up, carefully he dusted the flue out of its coat, and even as if he meant it did he ask it what was the matter.
“Hush!” said the B.P. in some excitement, “We've got Art!”
“Then the sooner you get rid of it the better, because you are not built that way. And which is it this time? Print or paint?”
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other StoriesThe Cause of Humanity and Other Stories Uncollected Prose Fictions, pp. 424 - 428Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018