The Man Who Would Be King is a short adventure story by Rudyard Kipling, set in British India. It follows two British adventurers who set out for a remote mountain region, hoping to find fortune and become rulers. It is worth listening for its vivid narrative and its questions about ambition, friendship, and empire.
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Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
The Man Who Would be King
By
Rudyard Kipling
Published by Brentano’s at 31 Union Square New York
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
“Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.”
The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came near to kinship with what might have been a veritable King and was promised the reversion of a Kingdom — army, lawcourts, revenue and policy all complete. But, to-day, I greatly fear that my King is dead, and if I want a crown I must go and hunt it for myself.
The beginning of everything was in a railway train upon the road to Mhow from Ajmir. There had been a deficit in the Budget, which necessitated travelling, not Secondclass, which is only half as dear as First-class, but by
Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty; or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not patronize refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside water. That is why in the hot weather Intermediates are taken out of the carriages dead, and in all weathers are most properly looked down upon.
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