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“The wrong thing”, “The Bridge-Builders” - Rudyard Kipling

“The wrong thing” story. With Mr Springett, the village builder, Dan meets Sir Harry Dawe, the great master mason of Tudor times, who he had first encountered the previous year. He tells a story of his pride in his work, and the hatred between him and another craftsman, Benedetto, who was jealous of his skills. In his pride, Hal has made a painting to decorate one of the King’s ships ‘all in a heat after supper’, but it is not a good piece of work; it is the ‘wrong thing’ of the title.

One dark night Benedetto seizes him and threatens to cut his throat. But Hal tells how the King (Henry VII) had just knighted him, not for his craftsmanship and achievements, but because he had saved the King trouble over a small matter. The sword the King used to make him a knight was rusty; this too was ‘the wrong thing’. Hal’s pride had taken a fall. The two craftsmen laugh together at the irony of it, and the hatred between them is gone.

The second book by Rudyard Kipling. “The Bridge-Builders“. There were labour contractors by the half-hundred – fitters and riveters, European, borrowed from the railway workshops, with, perhaps, twenty white and half-caste subordinates to direct, under direction, the bevies of workmen – but none knew better than these two, who trusted each other, how the underlings were not to be trusted. They had been tried many times in sudden crises – by slipping of booms, by breaking of tackle, failure of cranes, and the wrath of the river.

Rudyard Kipling “The wrong thing”

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