30 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 



shorten this to Kib — Dunsany's giver of life 

 upon the earth. 



My heart's desire is to run on and tell many 

 paragraphs of Kib; but that, as I have said, 

 would be bad taste, which is one form of immo- 

 rality. For in such things sentiment runs too 

 closely parallel to sentimentality, — moderation 

 becomes maudlinism, — and one enters the caste 

 of those who tell anecdotes of children, and the 

 latest symptoms of their physical ills. And the 

 deeper one feels the joys of friendship with in- 

 dividual small folk of the jungle, the more diffi- 

 cult it is to convey them to others. And so it is 

 not of the tropical mammal coati-mundi, nor even 

 of the humorous Kib that I think, but of the soul 

 of him galloping up and down his slanting log, 

 of his little inner ego, which changed from a wild 

 thing to one who would hurl himself from any 

 height or distance into a lap, confident that we 

 would save his neck, welcome him, and waste 

 good time playing the game which he invented, of 

 seeing whether we could touch his little cold snout 

 before he hid it beneath his curved arms. 



So, in spite of my resolves, our bamboo groves 

 became the homes of numerous little souls of wild 

 folk, whose individuality shone out and domi- 



