The Man Who Would Be King

The Man Who Would Be King,
by Rudyard Kipling

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Title: The Man Who Would Be King
Author: Rudyard Kipling

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The Man Who Would be King
By
Rudyard Kipling

Published by Brentano’s at 31 Union Square New York
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
“Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.”
The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy
to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under
circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the
other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once
came near to kinship with what might have been a veritable King and
was promised the reversion of a Kingdom —army, law-courts, revenue
and policy all complete. But, to-day, I greatly fear that my King is dead,
and if I want a crown I must go and hunt it for myself.

The beginning of everything was in a railway train upon the road to
Mhow from Ajmir. There had been a deficit in the Budget, which
necessitated travelling, not Second-class, which is only half as dear as
First-class, but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are
no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the population are either
Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night
journey is nasty; or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated.
Intermediates do not patronize refreshment-rooms. They carry their
food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native
sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside water. That is why in the hot
weather Intermediates are taken out of the carriages dead, and in all
weathers are most properly looked down upon.
My particular Intermediate happened to be empty till I reached
Nasirabad, when a huge gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered, and,
following the custom of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He was
a wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but with an educated taste for
whiskey. He told tales of things he had seen and done, of
out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into which he had penetrated, and
of adventures in which he risked his life for a few days’ food. “If India
was filled with men like you and me, not knowing more than the crows
where they’d get their next day’s rations, it isn’t seventy millions of
revenue the land would be paying—it’s seven hundred million,” said he;
and as I looked at his mouth and chin I was disposed to agree with him.
We talked politics—the politics of Loaferdom that sees things from the
underside where the lath and plaster is not smoothed off—and we
talked postal arrangements because my friend wanted to send a
telegram back from the next station to Ajmir, which is the turning-off
place from the Bombay to the Mhow line as you travel westward. My
friend had no money beyond eight annas which he wanted for dinner,
and I had no money at all, owing to the hitch in the Budget before
mentioned. Further, I was going into a wilderness where, though I
should resume touch with the Treasury, there were no telegraph offices.
I was, therefore, unable to help him in any way.
“We might threaten a Station-master, and make him send a wire on
tick,” said my friend, “but that’d mean inquiries for you and for me,

and I’ve got my hands full these days. Did you say you are travelling
back along this line