Lyndhurst, New Forest.
1909.
Aug 19-23
Rudyard Kipling.
Nothing, I found, pleased him more than to have me suggest
some theme which afforded him an opportunity to give
full rise to his splendid imagination and love of humor.
Thus when I asked him abruptly what would happen
were I to enter the New Forest with a gun concealed
under my coat and to discharge it a few times there,
he outlined, in the most picturesque and ludicrous terms,
a rapid sketch of what would be likely to befall
me, laughing, all the while, [?]. First a forest
policeman or warden would quickly appear and arrest me
with many apologies for doing so. Next I should be
brought before a local magistrate and by him remanded
to a higher court where a King's Counsel would listen
to the evidence very gravely and then point out to me
that I had offended against the laws of the Kingdom
and of the Forest on "heaven knows how many counts".
Finanlly I would be administered and discharged without
fine or other penalty for this first offence. "Everybody would
be most polite and many regrets would be expressed
for the inconvenience to which they had unavoidably been
forced to subject" me.
  When I asked him why he selected the Black Leopard
as Mowgli's bosom friend, in the Jungle Book, he replied
"because of his color, which appeals to the imagination" adding
"I know, of course, that the Black Leopard has a fiend
of a temper & is, indeed, a devil incarnate". He assured
me that small boys in India sometimes take to the forest
and consort with wolves in their dens. One that he
knew of presumably & I think actually saw, ran on "all
fours" using his elbows in places of fore feet. When first
recovered he could make only wolf-like sounds.