The cruelest month: 'Satiable curtiosity

I believe there must be an entry from Rudyard Kipling in National Poetry Month. You gotta have a representative of that muscular Christianity style of the late Victorians, don’t you?

For a guy who never wore the uniform, Kipling did a whole lotta evangelizing for empire and the military effort it took to support it; he’s the one who enjoined the Brits to “take up the white man’s burden”. He also wrote shedloads of wonderful stories, collected in such offerings as The Jungle Book and Just-So Stories; and every once in a while I haul out Kim to reread, just because it’s a great adventure about the Great Game.

One of my favorites of his Just-So stories is “The Elephant’s Child”, because that Elephant’s Child was just full of ‘satiable curtiosity. Which is how elephants got their long trunks. Don’t believe me? Here’s how it starts:

“IN the High and Far-Off Times the Elephant, O Best Beloved, had no trunk. He had only a blackish, bulgy nose, as big as a boot, that he could wriggle about from side to side; but he couldn't pick up things with it. But there was one Elephant--a new Elephant--an Elephant's Child--who was full of 'satiable curtiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions.”

I don’t know how exactly it works out, but it turns out that I’m actually related to that Elephant’s Child, maybe second cousin once removed, because I’m always asking ever so many questions. And, like the Elephant’s Child, I’ve had my share of spankings by way of answers.

Anyhow, at the end of the story (which I do recommend highly; you can find it here), Kipling adds this poem:

I Keep six honest serving-men:

  (They taught me all I knew)

Their names are What and Where and When

  And How and Why and Who.

I send them over land and sea,

  I send them east and west;

But after they have worked for me,

  I give them all a rest.

I let them rest from nine till five.

  For I am busy then,

As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,

  For they are hungry men:

But different folk have different views:

  I know a person small--

She keeps ten million serving-men,

  Who get no rest at all!

She sends 'em abroad on her own affairs,

  From the second she opens her eyes--

One million Hows, two million Wheres,

  And seven million Whys!

Anyone ever trained as a journalist knows this six honest serving men. And anyone who’s read the story knows what a workout the Elephant’s Child gave them.