Descending of Dana Day by Woundyard Kipling. When the devil rides on your chest,
remember the Chamar native proverb. Once upon a time, some people in
India made a new heaven and a new Earth out of broken teacups, a
missing brooch or two, and a hair brush. These were hidden under bushes
or stuffed into holes in the hillside, and an entire civil service of subordinate
gods used to find or mend them again. And every one said, there
are more things in heaven and Earth than are drained in our philosophy. Several
other things happened also, but the religion never seemed to get much beyond its
first manifestations. Though it added an air line, postal duck, and orchestral
effects in order to keep abreast of the times and stall off competent, this
religion was too elastic for ordinary use. It stretched itself and embraced pieces of
everything that medicine men of all ages have manufactured. It approved and stalled from
freemasonry, looted the latter de rosicrusions of half their pet words, took any
fragment of Egyptian philosophy that it found in the Encyclopedia Britannica annexed as many of
the Vedas as had been translated into French or English, and talked of all
the rest built in. The German versions of what is left of the Zanda
Vesta encouraged white, gray and black magic, including spiritualism, palmistry, fortune
telling by cards, hot chestnuts, double kerneled nuts, and tallow droppings would
have adopted voodoo and Obu had it known anything about them, and showed itself
in every way one of the most accommodating arrangement that had ever been invented since
the birth of the sea. When it was in thorough working order, with
all the machinery down to the subscriptions complete, Dna Day came from nowhere with
nothing in his hands and wrote the chapter in its history, which has hitherto
been unpublished. He said that his first name was Dana and his second was
They. Now sitting aside Dana of the New York Sundna is a Pahel name
and they fits no native of India, unless you accept the bengalide as.
The original spelling they is lap or finish, and Dana Day was neither finn
Chin Pahil benga lap ne'er Gaunt, Romany, mak Bocariot, Kurd, Armenian,
Leventine, Jew, Persian, Panjab, Madrasi, Percy, nor anything
else known to ethnologists. He was simply Day a day, and the kind
to give further information. For the sake of brevity, and as roughly indicating
his origin, he was called the Native. He might have been the original
old man of the mountains, who is said to be the only authorized head
of the Teacup Creed. Some people said that he was, but Dyna Day
used to smile and deny any connection with the court, explaining that he was
an independent experimenter. As I have said, he came from nowhere with his
hands behind his back, and studied the creed for three weeks, sitting at
the feet of those best competent to explain its mysteries. Then he laughed aloud
and went away. But the laugh might have been either of devotion or derision.
When he returned, he was without money, but his pride was unabated.
He declared that he knew more about the things in heaven and earth than
those who taught him, and for this contumacy was abandoned altogether. His next
appearance in public life was at a big cantonment in Upper India, and he
was then telling fortunes with the help of three laden dies, e, very
dirty old cloth, and a little tin box of opium pills. He told
better fortunes when he was allowed half a bottle of whiskey, but the things
which he invented on the opium were quite worth the money. He was in
reduced circumstances. Among other peoples, he told the fortune of an Englishman who
had once been interested in the similar creed, but who later on had married
and forgotten all his old knowledge in the study of babies and exchange. The
Englishman allowed Dya Day to tell a fortune for charity's sake, and gave him
five rupees, a dinna and some old clothes. When he had eaten,
Dyna Day professed gratitude and asked if there were anything he could do for his
host. In the esoteric line, is there any one that you love,
said Dyna Day. The Englishman loved his wife, but had no desire to
drag her name into the conversation. He therefore shook his head. Is there
any one that you hate, said deynah Day. The Englishman said that there
were several men whom he hated deeply. Very good, said Dena Day,
upon whom the whiskey and the opium were beginning to tell. Only give me
their names, and I will despatch a sending to them and kill them.
Now. Ascending is a horrible arrangement, first invented, they say in Iceland.
It is a thing sent by a wizard, and may take any form,
but most generally wanders about the land in the shape of a little purple
cloud till it finds Descendy, and him it kills by changing into the form
of a horse, or a cat, or a man without a face.
It is not strictly a native patent, though Tamars can, if irritated,
despatch ascending, which sits on the breast of their enemy by night and nearly
kills him. Very few natives care to irritate Chamars. For this reason.
Let me despatch ascending, said Dana Day. I am nearly dead now with
want and drink and opium, but I should like to kill a man before
I die. I can send ascending anywhere you choose, and in any form,
except in the shape of a man. The Englishman had no friends that
he wished to kill, but partly to suit Dinna Day, whose eyes were
rolling and partly to see what would be done. He asked whether a modified
sending could not be arranged for such a sending as should make a man's life
a burden to him and yet do him no harm. If this were possible,
he notified his willingness to give Diyna Day ten rupees for the job.
I am not what I was, once, said Diyna Day, and I
must take the money because I am poor. To what Englishman solids send it?
Send a sending to Lone Saib, said the Englishman, naming a man
who had been most bitter in rebuking him for his apostasy from the teacup creed.
Diyna Dy laughed and nodded. I could have chosen no better man myself,
said he. I will see that he finds descending about his path and
about his bed. He lay down on the hearth rug, turned up the
whites of his eyes, shivered all over, and began to snort. This
was magic or opium, or descending or all three. When he opened his
eyes, he vowed that descending had started upon the wall path and was at
that moment flying up to the town where Lone sahiblows give me my ten rupees,
said Dynaday wearily, and write a letter to Lone Sahib, telling him
and all who believe with him, that you and a friend are using a
power greater than theirs. They will see that you are speaking the truth.
He departed unsteadily, with the promise of some more repeat if anything came of
this, The Englishman sent a letter to Lone Sahib, couched in what he
remembered of the terminology of the creed. He wrote, I also in the
days of what you held to be my back sliding, have obtained enlightenment,
and with enlightenment has come power. Then he grew so deeply mysterious that the
recipient of the letter could make neither head nor tail of it, and was
proportionately impressed, for he fancied that his friend had become a fifth rounder.
When a man is a fifth rounder, he can do more than Slade and
Hooden combined. Loneshibe read the letter in five different fashions, and was beginning
a sixth interpretation when his bearer dashed in with the news that there was a
cat on his bed. Now, if there was one thing that lonesoev hated
more than another. It was a cat. He rated the bearer for not
turning it out of the house. The bearer said that he was afraid all
the doors of the bedroom had been shut throughout the morning, and no real
cat could possibly have entered the room. He would prefer not to meddle with
the creature. Lone Sahib entered the room gingerly, and there on the pillow
of his bed sprawled and whimpered. A wee white kitten. Not a jump
some frisky little beast, but a slug like crawler, with its eyes barely
open and its pause lacking strength or direction, A kitten that ought to have
been in a basket with its mamma. Lone Sahib caught it by the scruff
of its neck, handed it over to the sweeper to be drowned and find
the bearer for on us. That evening, as he was reading in his
room, he fancied that he saw something moving about on the hearth's rug outside
the circle of light from his breathing lamp. When the thing began to yell,
he realized that it was a kitten, A wee white kitten, nearly
blind and very miserable. He was seriously angry and spoke bitterly to his bearer,
who said that there was no kitten in the room when he brought in
the lamp, and real kittens of tender age generally had mother cats in attendants.
If the present will go out into the verandah and listen, said the
bearer, he will hear no cats. How therefore can the kitten on the
bed and the kitten on the hearthwork be real kittens? Lone Sahib went out
to listen, and the bearer followed him, but there was no sound of
Rachel mewing for her children. He returned to his room, having hurled the
kitten down the hillside, and wrote out the incidents of the day for the
benefit of his co religionists. Those people were so absolutely free from superstition that
they ascribed anything a little out of the common to agencies, as it was
their business to know all about the agencies. They were on terms of almost
indecent familiarity with manifestations of every kind. Their letters dropped from the ceiling unstamped,
and spirits used to squatter up and down their staircases all night. But
they had never come into contact with kittens lond Sahib wrote out the facts,
noting the hour and the minute, as a resychical observer is bound to do,
and depending the Englishman's letter because it was the most mysterious document and might
have had a bearing upon anything in this world or the next. An outsider
would have translated all the tangle does look out. You laughed at me once,
and now I am going to make you set up. Lonzeib's co religionists
found that meaning in it, but their translation was refined and full of forcelable
words. They held a ceederand and were filled with tremulous joy, for in
spite of their familiarity with all the other worlds and cycles, they had a
very human awe of things sent from ghost land. They met in Lonese Haibe's
room in shrouded and sepulchral gloom, and their conclave was broken up by a
clinking among the photo frames on the mantel piece. A wee white kitten,
nearly blind, was looping and writhing itself between the clock and the candlesticks.
That stopped all investigations or doubtings. Here was the manifestation in the flesh.
It was so far as could be seen devoid of purpose, but it was
a manifestation of undoubted authenticity. They drafted the round robin to the Englishman,
the backsider of old days, adjuring him in the interests of the creed,
to explain whether there was any connection between the embodiment of some Egyptian god or
other. I have forgotten the name and his communication. They called the kitten
ra or Thoth or Shem or Noah or something. And when lone Sahib confessed
that the first one had, at his most misguided instances, been drowned by
the sweeper, they said consolingly that in his next life he would be a
bounder, and not even a rounder of the lowest grade. These words may
not be quite correct, but they expressed the sense of the house accurately.
When the Englishman received the round robin, it came by post, he was
startled and bewildered. He sent in to the bazaar for day in and day
who read the letter and laughed. That is my sending, said he.
I told you I would work well. Now give me another ten rupees.
But what in the world is this gibberish about the Egyptian gods? Asked the
Englishman. Cats said dyn a Day with a hiccough, for he had discovered
the Englishman's whisky bottle. Cats and cats and cats. Never was such a
sending A hundred of cats. Now give me ten more rupees and write as
I dictate. Then a Day's letter was a curiosity. It bore the Englishman's
signature and hinted at cats, at ascending of cats. The mere words on
paper were creepy and on canny. To behold, what have you done,
though, said the Englishman? I am as much in the dark as ever.
Do you mean to say that you can actually send this absurd sending?
You talk about George for yourself, said Dinna Day. What does not let
him mean? In a little time they will all be at my feet and
yours, and I O glory will be drugged or drunk or lay long.
Din a Day knew his people. When a man who hates cats wakes up
in the morning and finds a little squirming kitten on his breast, or puts
his hand into his oldster pocket and finds a little half that kitten where his
gloves should be, or opens his trunk and finds a vile kitten among his
dress shirts, or goes for a long ride with macintosh strapped on his saddle
bow, and shakes a little sprawling kitten from its folds when he opens it,
or goes out to dinner and finds a little blind kitten under his chair,
or stays at home and finds a rhything kitten under the coilt, or
wriggling among his boots, or hanging had downward in his tobacco jar, or
being mangled by his terrier in the verandah. When such a man finds one
kitten neither more nor less, once a day, in a place where no
kitten rightly could or should be, he is naturally upset. When he dare
not murder his daily trove because he believes it to be a manifestation, an
emissary, an embodiment, and have a dozen other things, all out of
the regular cause of nature, he is more than upset. He is actually
distressed. Some of Lon Sehib's co religionists thought that he was a highly favored
individual, but many said that if he had treated the first kitten with proper
respect, as suited as tautah to whomb sinequiib embodiment, all his trouble would
have been averted. They compared him to the ancient mariner, but none the
less they were out of him and proud of the Englishman who had sent the
manifestation. They did not call it ascending, because Icelandic magic was not in
their program. After sixteen kittens, that is to say, after a fortnight,
for there were three kittens on the first day. To impress the fact
of descending, the whole camp was uplifted by a letter. It came flying
through a window from the old Man of the Mountains, the head of all
the Creed, explaining the manifestation in the most beautiful language, and soaking up
all the credit of it for himself. The Englishman said the letter was not
there at all. He was a backslider without power or asceticism, who couldn't
even raise a table by force of volition, much less project an army of
kitten through space. The entire arrangement said the letter was strictly authored, worked,
and sanctioned by the highest authorities within the pale of the Creed. There
was great joy at this for some of the weaker brethren, seeing that an
outsider who had been working on independent lines could create kittens, whereas their own
rulers had never gone beyond crockery and broken at that were showing a desire to
break a line on their own trail. In fact, there was the promise
of his chism. A second round Robin was drafted to the Englishman, beginning
OUs Coffer and ending with the selection of courses from the rights of Mizraim and
Memphis, and the combination of Drugana, who was a fifth rounder, upon
whose name an Upstad third rounder once traded a papal excommunication, is a bier
doux. Compared to the combination of Drougana, the Englishman had been proved under
the hand and seal of the Old Man of the Mountains, to we have
appropriated virtue and pretended to have power, which in reality belonged only to the
Supreme Head. Naturally, the round Robin did not spare him. He handed
the letter today a day to translate into decent English. The effect on day
the day was curious. At first he was furiously angry, and then he
laughed. For five minutes. I had thought, he said, that they
would have come to me in another week. I would have shown that I
sent descending, and they would have discrowned the Old Man of the mountains,
who has sent descending of mine? Do you do nothing? The time has
come for me to act. Write as I dictate, and I will put
them into shame. But give me ten more rupees. At Dinna Day's dictation,
the Englishman wrote nothing less than for challenge to the Old Man of the
mountains. It wound up, and if this manifestation be from your hand,
then let it go forward. But if it be from my hand, I
will that the standing shall seize in two days time. On that day there
shall be twelve kittens, and thenceforward none at all. The people shall judge
between us. This was signed by Dayna Day, who added pentacles and pentagrams,
and the crooks and satta and half a dozen swastikas and a triple Tao
to his name, just to show that he was all he laid claim to
be. The challenge was read out to the gentlemen and ladies, and they
remembered then that Diyna Day had laughed at them some years ago. It was
officially announced that the Old Man of the Mountains would treat the matter with contempt.
They a Day, being an independent investigator without a sayled round at the
back of him. But this did not soothe his people. They wanted to
see a fight. They were very human for all their spirituality. Lone Sahib,
who was really being worn out with kittens, submitted meekly to his fate.
He felt that he was being kittened to prove the power of day to
day as the poets. When the stated day dawned, the shower of kittens
began. Some were white and some were tabby, and all were about the
same Loathsome age three were on his hearth rug, three in his bathroom,
and the other six turned up at intervals. Among the visitors who came to
see the prophecy break down, never was a more satisfactory sending. On the
next day there were no kittens, And the next day and all the other
days were kittenless and quiet. The people murmured and looked to the old man
of the mountains for an explanation. A letter written on a palm leaf dropped
from the ceiling, but every one except Lone Sahib, felt that letters were
not what the occasion demanded. There should have been cats. There should have
been cats full ground. Once the letter proved conclusively that there had been a
hitch in the psychic current, which colliding with a dual identity, had interfered
with the precipient activity. All along the main line, the kittens were still
going on, but owing to some failure in the developing fluid, they were
not materialized. The air was thick with letters for a few days afterwards,
unseen hands played Gluk and Beethoven on finger bowls and clock shades. But all
men felt that psychic life was a mockery without materialized kittens. Even lone tahebe
shouted with the majority on this head. These letters were very insulting, and
if he had then offered to lay the new departure, there is no knowing
what might not have happened. But dinn a Day was dying of whisky and
opium in the Englishman's go down, and had small heart for new creeds.
They have been put to shame, said he never was such as sending it
has killed me. Nonsense, said the Englishman. You are going to die
diyn a day, and that sort of stuff must be left behind. I'll
admit that you have made some queer things come about. Tell me honestly,
now, how was it done? Give me ten more rupees, said Dinna
Day faintly, and if I die before I spend them, bury them with
me. The silver was counted out, while dinn a day was fighting with
death. His hand closed upon the money, and he smiled, a grim
smile, bent low, he whispered, the Englishman bent Boronnia mission school,
expelled, Bokswallah peddler, Ceylon pearl merchant, all mine, English education outcasted
and made up named Dinna day, England with American thought reading man. And
you gave me ten rupees several times I gave the Sahib's bearer to eight a
month for cats, little a little cats, I wrote, and he put
them about, very clever man, Very few kittens now in the bazaar,
ask lone sahib sweeper's wife, So, saying dinner day gasped and passed away
into a land where, if all be true, there are no materializations,
and the making of new creeds is discouraged. But consider the gorgeous simplicity of
it all.