The Day's Work

This is a collection of some of Kipling's finest short stories which dates to the time (1898) when he was living in the US, making regular trips across the Atlantic, and feeling intensely homesick about Englad. Although there is no real organising theme many of the stories are about machines, ships, steam engines, trains and mechanisms (The Ship that found Herself - about a ship whose parts come together in a grand symphonic cacophony as a consequence of her maiden voyage) and men who work or make machines (The Bridge-Builders - about the mystic interaction between a man who designs and builds a bridge across the Ganges and the Hindu gods and goddesses of the River; or 'Bread upon the Waters' - about a Scottish engineer who is sacked by a shipping company for refusing to push a ship harder than he thought was safe and who gets his own back by cashing in on the salvage of another ship which is driven to destruction by its foolish owners). THe other theme is animals, though to tell the truth many of the machines are animate as well. This includes one of Kipling's most famous stories, The Maltese Cat, about a polo pony, though A Walking Delegate is another story about horses that also shows Kipling's capacity for characterization. The latter story also includes a repellant anti-Union and anti-Socialist message with a strong under-current of violence. As well as these there are stories about you men of Jingoistic virtue and muscular militarism who Do Their Duty, and typically earn the love a fair lady. WIlliam the Conqueror is about a young couple who are thrown together in the relief effort of a famine in India. William is actually a woman but in Kipling's tale she has the same insouciant devotion to virtue that marks out his imperial saints. Finally, 'The Brushwood Boy' is a romantic fancy about a young man of superhuman capacity: head boy, military genius, adored by his men, who also maintains a busy dream life. He maintains his virginity intact until finally - literally - meeting the girl of his dreams, a woman whose dream country he had been visiting since they were children. A number of stories are marred by anti-Semitism. The 'dream girl' of the last story has a real name - Miriam (a Jew name as the hero announces) - which is swept aside when she affirms her real name is the one for the hero's dream girl, AnnieanLouise.

Not every story is perfect but most are distinguished by clever characterization and odd snatches of mysticism, not to mention the animated machines and humanised animals, that are the hallmark of Kipling's universe.