How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin by Rudyard Kipling Once upon a time,
On an uninhabited island on the shores of the Red Sea,
There lived a Parsi from whose hat the rays of sun were reflected in more than oriental splendor.
And the Parsi lived by the Red Sea with nothing but his hat and his knife and a cooking stove of the kind that you must particularly never touch.
And one day he took flour and water,
And currants and plums,
And sugar and things,
And made himself one cake,
Which was two feet across and three feet thick.
It was indeed a superior comstable,
That's magic,
And he put it on stove,
Because he was allowed to cook on the stove,
And he baked it,
And he baked it till it was all done brown and smelt most sentimental.
But just as he was going to eat it,
There came down to the beach,
From the altogether uninhabited interior,
One rhinoceros with a horn on his nose,
Two piggy eyes,
And few manners.
In those days the rhinoceros' skin fitted him quite tight,
There were no wrinkles in it anywhere.
He looked exactly like a Noah's Ark rhinoceros,
But of course,
Much bigger.
All the same,
He had no manners then,
And he has no manners now,
And he never will have any manners,
He said.
How?
And the Parsi left the cake and climbed to the top of the palm tree with nothing on but his hat,
From which the rays of the sun were always reflected in more than oriental splendor.
And the rhinoceros upset the oil stove with his nose,
And the cake rolled on the sand,
And he spiked the cake on the horn of his nose,
And he ate it,
And he went away,
Waving his tail,
To the desolate and exclusively uninhabited interior.
Then the Parsi came down from his palm tree and put the stove on its legs,
And recited the following sloka,
Which,
As you have not heard,
I will now proceed to relate.
Them that takes cakes,
Which the Parsi man bakes,
Makes dreadful mistakes.
And there was a great deal more in that than you would think,
Because five weeks later there was a heat wave in the Red Sea,
And everybody took off all the clothes they had.
The Parsi took off his hat,
But the rhinoceros took off his skin and carried it over his shoulder as he came down to the beach to bathe.
In those days it buttoned underneath with three buttons and looked like a waterproof.
He said nothing whatever about the Parsi's cake,
Because he had eaten it all,
And he never had any manners then,
Since,
Or henceforward.
He waddled straight into the water and blew bubbles through his nose,
Leaving his skin on the beach.
Presently the Parsi came by and found the skin,
And he smiled one smile that ran all round his face times two.
Then he danced three times around the skin and rubbed his hands.
Then he went to his camp and filled his hat with cake crumbs,
For the Parsi never ate anything but cake,
And never swept out his camp.
He took that skin,
And he shook that skin,
And he scrubbed that skin,
And he rubbed that skin just as full of old,
Dry,
Stale,
Tickly cake crumbs and some burn currents as ever it could possibly hold.
Then he climbed to the top of his palm tree and waited for the rhinoceros to come out of the water and put it on.
And the rhinoceros did.
He buttoned it up with the three buttons,
And it tickled like cake crumbs in bed.
Then he wanted to scratch,
But that made it worse.
And then he lay down on the sands and rolled and rolled and rolled,
And every time he rolled the cake crumbs tickled him worse and worse and worse.
Then he ran to the palm tree and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed himself against it.
He rubbed so much and so hard that he rubbed his skin into great folds over his shoulders and another fold underneath where the buttons used to be,
But he had rubbed the buttons off.
And he rubbed some more folds over his legs.
And it spoiled his temper,
But it didn't make the least difference to the cake crumbs.
They were inside his skin and they tickled.
So he went home,
Very angry indeed and horribly scratchy.
And from that day to this,
Every rhinoceros has great folds in his skin and a very bad temper,
All on account of the cake crumbs inside.
But the Parsi came down from his palm tree,
Wearing his hat,
From which the rays of the sun were reflected in more than oriental splendor,
Packed up his cooking stove and went away.
This uninhabited island is off Cape Guadafui by the beaches of Socotra and the Pink Arabian Sea.
But it's hot too,
Hot from Suez,
For the likes of you and me ever to go in a P and O and call on the Cake Parsi.
And that is the end of our story this evening.
Until next time,
Sweet dreams.
