Explore "The Finest Story in the World" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"O' ever the knightly years were gone / With the old world to the grave, / I was a king in Babylon / And you were a Christian slave. " / -- W. E. Henley.
His name was Charlie Mears; he was the only son of his mother who was a / widow, and he lived in the north of London, coming into the City / every day to work in a bank. He was twenty years old and suffered from / aspirations. I met him in a public billiard-saloon where the marker / called him by his given name, and he called the marker "Bulls-eyes. " / Charley explained, a little nervously, that he had only come to the / place to look on, and since looking on at games of skill is not a cheap / amusement for the young, I suggested that Charlie should go back to his / mother.