KILWINNING, an industrial town in Ayrshire, Scotland, quite close to Irvine. It possesses woolen factories, coal mines, iron works, engineering and fire-clay establishments. It is situated in historic ground and the whole neighborhood is rich in Highland and Lowland traditions. Near to the town is Eglinton which possesses extensive iron works and the famous castle of the same name, the scene of the Eglinton Tournament (1839). Kilwinning claims the honor of being the mother of the freemasonry of Scotland. Pop. about 5,000.
KIM, by Rudyard Kipling, ranked by some critics as °the author's highest attainment in fiction? narrates the colorful adventures of young Kimball O'Hara, son of an Irish soldier in India, reared from babyhood as a waif among low-caste Hindus and known among his variegated native acquaintances as °the Little Friend of all the World? Kim attaches himself, as disciple and protector, to a splendid. wise yet simple old Tibetan lama, who is wandering through India in search of a mystic river that is to wash him clean of all earthly sins, sorrows and penalties. The boy's Euro pean parentage is discovered, and Kim, with the lama's aid, is sent to school where he ii educated with a view to his employment in the British secret service, for which he is peculiarly fitted by his natural gifts and his intimate knowledge of native life. Then, still in his
teens, and unofficially attached to the secret service, he resumes his wanderings with the lama through India and far into the Himalayas. where he is instrumental in defeating the machinations of foreign spies among the na tive princes. On its first appearance in book form, 19 Oct. 1901, was enthusiastically hailed as a marvelous revelation of Hindustan. Thus a reviewer in The Academy (London) writes, "Kim) is hardly a novel. It is a kinemetograph of a people, telling what they feel — what they have felt through time, and the effect of that immemorial feeling on those of to-day? And Edgar Allen Forbes who fol lowed .the route of- the tale through India de clares is to me the best guide book and the most faithful interpreteit that the traveler may find in India. No other book that I know of so clearly unfolds that wonderful 'and and its mysterious customs?