SOLDIERS THREE, by Rudyard Kipling, is thus well described in the title-page of the original edition, printed in 1888 in Allahahad by the Pioneer Press as Number 1 of A. H. Wheeler and Company's Indian Railway Li brary:
We be Soldiers Tbree Pardonnes moy, je vous en prie.
Most of these tales are told in the inimitable
language of the Irish member of the
nership, Terence Mulvaney, whose humor,
philosophy„ strength and tenderness
ately endeared him to the reading public, and
those stories in which the big Irishman plays
the leading role, such the
views,' Henry James declares, "Mulvaney is
a creation to be proud of and his two
rades stand as firm on their legs. In spite of
. Mulvaney's social possibilities, they are all three
finished brutes; but it is precisely in the finish
that we delight." And the Edinburgh Review
says, "Mr. Kipling paints the real man, with
his natural blackguardism, softened and
deemed by a rough chivalry, by unexpected
gleams of tenderness and by a strong feeling
of comradeship toward his brothers in arms."
The revised editions, under the title