My Christmas Treasury

The original edition (1902) of Rudyard Kipling's yarns for children, JUST SO STORIES, has 12 tales. Some later editions added a 13th ("The Tabu Tale") and might have added a 14th from 1895, THE JUNGLE BOOK, on how the tiger got his stripes. *** Most of the stories are about animals, usually having one part of their anatomy being transformed by outside pressure ( e.g. a young elephant's puffy nose being stretched out to today's dimensions by a crocodile trying to drag the curious youngster for its dinner into "the great gray-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees"). But my favorite is about the domestication by earliest humans of the first wild animals: dog, horse and cat. It is called "The Cat That Walked by Himself." And the free-spirited cat was notable for negotiating, not entirely to his satisfaction, the anarchical terms under which he will consent to live with Man, Woman and Baby "for always and always and always." *** Standing far apart from the animal tales are two inter-twined yarns: "How the First Letter Was Written" and "How The Alphabet Was Made." Rooting the alphabet as we know it in a young cave girl's efforts to send a message home through a stranger speaking a different language but carrying with him an incomprehensible sketch she had drawn, Kipling makes learning the alphabet extra fun for youngsters and adds a bit of spoofing history as well. *** It is easy to imagine that the "O my Best Beloved" to whom Kipling later told the JUST SO STORIES was his oldest child, Vermont-born Josephine ("josie") who died of pneumonia at age six. -OOO-