PREFACE.
It was good advice that Rudyard Kipling gave his "young British soldier" in regard to the latter's rifle: "She's human as you are--you treat her as sich And she'll fight for the young British soldier." Tommy Atkins' rifle was by no means the first inanimate or dumb thing to prove human and to deserve human treatment.

Animals of all sorts have been given this quality.

Jack London's dog, in _The Call of the Wild_, has human interest.

So has the immortal _Black Beauty_.
But we are not concerned with animals now.

Kipling's ocean liner has human interest--a soul.