The Dunce Newbolt, not Kipling, wrote: "The Gading's jammed and
the colonel's dead.' We shall, in all probability, never know how heavy a toll the mail van robbers took of letters calling attention to my hideous mistake; only 53 have got through so far. To their writers—and to the many more who did not write—I can only offer my thanks and my apologies. To judge from their letters, some people seem to have been less pro- foundly distressed than others by the howler, and a few even treated the matter frivolously. But among the generality% and particularly among Old Cliftonians, there was a deep under- current of moral, indignation, and phrases like "the indignity which this great English man of letters has suffered" were common. The stateliest and to my mind—for in these matters a certain tenue should be observed—the most fitting rebuke came from Mrs. W. F. Parsons, of 46 Malvern Court, S.W.7, who wrote : "I refrain from giving you the real title and author of the said poem because in the first place it would be a salutary exercise for you to discover it for yourself, and secondly you will doubtless receive countless other letters of remonstrance on the subject. This poem and its author are
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