I was a bit sick about Abaft the Funnel because the enterprising Dodge must have sent or got a man to rake through old newspaper files and hike out everything that he thought was mine.
[The Letters of Rudyard Kipling Vol 3, ed. Thomas Pinney, p. 418].

THE measure of a man's popularity is not always—or indeed seldom—the measure of his intrinsic worth. So, when the earlier work of any writer is gathered together in more enduring form, catering to the enthusiasm of his readers in his maturer years, there is always a suspicion that the venture is purely a commercial one, without literary justification.

Fortunately these stories of Mr. Kipling's form their own best excuse for this, their first appearance together in book form. Not merely because in them may be traced the origin of that style and subject matter that later made their author famous; but because the stories are in themselves worth while—worth writing, worth reading. “The Likes o’ Us” is as true to the type as any of the immortal Mulvaney stories; the beginning of “New Brooms” is as succinctly fine as any prose Mr. Kipling ever wrote; for searching out and presenting such splendid pieces of fiction as “Sleipner, late Thurinda,” and “A Little More Beef” to a public larger than their original one in India, no apology is necessary. (A.F.)
[“A.F.” has not been identified – Ed.]

'Messrs. B. W. Dodge & Company have issued without my knowledge or sanction the following odds and ends unearthed from newspaper files of twenty years ago, and therefore unprotected by copyright. I should never have reprinted them, but Messrs. Dodge's enterprise compels me to do so.' RUDYARD KIPLING, OCTOBER 1909.

“Men in pajamas sitting abaft the funnel and swapping lies of the purple seas.”

. . . A pair of loose drawers or trowsers, tied round the waist. . . It was adopted from the Mohammedans by Europeans as an article of dishabille, and of night attire, . . [1828.– “His chief joy smoking a cigar in loose paee-jams and native slippers.” Orient. Sport. Mag., reprint 1878. i, 64.] . . .

. . . if Dodge had not printed these 30 stories it is highly unlikely that we should have been able to study 24 or 25 of them and it therefore seems that it was quite a good idea that Kipling “had his hand forced”, for although some of them are not quite the best quality, others are interesting and worth reading.

... had left Lahore by mid-November 1887 and was writing for the Pioneer [of Allahabad] by early December. . . At the beginning of 1888 he was put in charge of a new supplement to the Pioneer called the Week’s News ... Thus began the series of stories that, later in 1888, were collected in the series called “The Railway Library” ... So abundant was the flow from Kipling’s pen in these months of 1888 that the Pioneer could not absorb it all and a good part of it continued to be diverted to the pages of the Civil and Military Gazette [in Lahore].

• No. 1. Soldiers Three – seven stories and one poem.
  
  
• No. 2. The Story of the Gadsbys – eight chapters and one poem.
  
  
• No. 3. In Black and White – eight stories.
  
  
• No. 4. Under the Deodars – six stories.
  
  
• No. 5. The Phantom Rickshaw – four, two of which had been previously published in Quartette in 1885.
  
  
• No. 6. Wee Willie Winkie – four stories

We regret to hear that Mr. Rudyard Kipling has broken down from overwork. He has been ordered to take a sea voyage, and sailed on board the P. and O. steamer Shannon for Naples on Thursday.