KIRBY 



3261 



KITCHENER 



in modern British political questions, his en- 

 thusiasm for the principles of imperialism be- 

 ing matched by his opposition to Home Rule 

 for Ireland. During the War of the Nations 

 a number of articles written in his brilliant 

 and interesting style, and giving his personal 

 impressions of scenes in the war zone, were 

 published. C.W.K. 



Consult Hopkins' Rudyard Kipling: A Survey 

 of His Literary Art. A valuable work for the 

 reader of Kipling is Young's Dictionary of the 

 Characters and Scenes in the Stories and Poems 

 of Rudyard Kipling. 



KIR 'BY, WILLIAM (1817-1906), a Canadian 

 novelist and poet, author of The Golden Dog, 

 regarded as the best historical novel yet writ- 

 ten by a Canadian. The tale takes its name 

 from a tablet, on a building in Quebec, on 

 which is shown a dog gnawing the thigh bone 

 of a man; it deals with the struggle of the 

 French to hold Canada against the British. 

 Besides a number of other prose works, Kirby 

 wrote U. E., an epic poem dealing with the 

 United Empire Loyalists, and Canadian Idylls, 

 a volume of poems. Kirby was born at King- 

 ston-upon-Hull, England, went to Canada as 

 a boy of fifteen, and with his parents settled 

 at Niagara, Ont. There he was from 1839 to 

 1859 editor of the Niagara Mail and from 1871 

 to 1895 collector of customs. G.H.L. 



KIRGHIZ, kirgeez' , a group of wandering 

 tribes who inhabit the plains and marshes 

 between the borders of European Russia and 

 those of Western China, northward beyond 

 the Syr-Darya River. They possess Mongolian 

 features and Tartar speech, and are subject 

 to Russia. They live in tents, keep cattle, 

 horses, camels, goats and fat-tailed sheep, and 

 raise wheat, barley and millet. Manufactur- 

 ing among them is limited to handwork in 

 metals and the weaving of wools, and trade is 

 carried on by barter. Their number is esti- 

 mated to be 3,000,000. 



KISHINEV, keshenyawj' , a town of South- 

 western Russia, the center and capital of the 

 rich agricultural province of Bessarabia. It 

 lies on the Byk River, a branch of the Dnies- 

 ter, eighty-six miles n.orthwest of Odessa, and 

 on a railway connecting Odessa and Jassy, in 

 Rumania. The place is divided into two parts 

 the old town, with its shabby buildings and 

 unpaved streets, and the new, built on high 

 crags above the river; in the suburbs are fer- 

 tile gardens which yield great quantities of 

 fruits. Kishinev is the residence of a bishop, 

 and has a number of educational institutions. 



Among the decorative features are monuments 

 erected to Czar Alexander II and the poet 

 Pushkin. Industrially the town is known for 

 its production of tobacco, tallow, grain, wool, 

 soap and flour. Its history dates from the 

 fifteenth century. In 1903 and again in 1905 

 there occurred in the city terrible massacres of 

 the Jews. Population, 1912, 125,876. 



KITCHEN CABINET, a nickname in Ameri- 

 can political history. It was applied to a 

 group of men who, during the Presidency of 

 Andrew Jackson, although they held no impor- 

 tant government offices, exercised a greater 

 influence over the policy of the administration 

 than did the members of the Cabinet them- 

 selves. The most influential of these unoffi- 

 cial advisers were Major William B. Lewis, 

 second auditor of the treasury; Isaac Hill, 

 editor of the New Hampshire Patriot; Amos 

 Kendall, fourth auditor of the treasury; Duff 

 Green, editor of the United States Telegraph 

 (Washington, D. C.), and Francis P. Blair, 

 editor of the Washington Globe. 



KITCH'ENER, until 1916 known as BERLIN, 

 is the county town of Waterloo County, Onta- 

 rio, sixty-three miles west of Toronto and 

 thirty-five miles west of Hamilton. Gait and 

 Guelph are each fourteen miles distant, the 

 former to the southeast, the latter to the 

 northeast. Kitchener is on the Grand Trunk 

 Railway, and an electric line furnishes connec- 

 tion with the Canadian Pacific at Gait. The 

 vicinity of Kitchener is a famous agricultural 

 section, but the town itself is a manufacturing 

 center, with a total annual output valued at 

 $10,000,000. Furniture, shirts and collars, rub- 

 ber goods, leather, buttons, boots and shoes, 

 trunks, clocks and gasoline engines are among 

 the principal products. Kitchener is the seat 

 of Saint Jerome's College, a Roman Catholic 

 institution founded in 1865. The town owns 

 and operates its street railway, electric light 

 and gas plants and waterworks. A large part 

 of the population of the town and the sur- 

 rounding country is of German birth or descent. 

 This fact caused considerable comment at the 

 beginning of the War of the Nations in 1914. 

 Finally, in 1916, the name was changed from 

 Berlin, which it had been since its foundation, 

 to Kitchener, in honor of the great British 

 military leader. The change was made volun- 

 tarily as evidence of the people's loyalty to 

 Canada and the British Empire. Population 

 in 1911, 15,196; in 1916, about 19,000. 



KITCHENER, HORATIO HERBERT, Earl Kitch- 

 ener of Khartum (1850-1916), familiarly known 



