How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #7
They heaped the tray again with odds and ends gathered from the shop, and even the kitchen, and every time the child won, till Kim marvelled.
'Bind my eyes—let me feel once with my fingers, and even then I will leave thee opened-eyed behind,' he challenged.
Kim stamped with vexation when the lad made his boast good.
'If it were men—or horses,' he said, 'I could do better. This playing with tweezers and knives and scissors is too little.'
'Learn first—teach later,' said Lurgan Sahib. 'Is he thy master?'
'Truly. But how is it done?'
'By doing it many times over till it is done perfectly—for it is worth doing.' (9.100-105)
The Jewel Game is one of the things the novel Kim is best known for: Lurgan shows Kim a group of about fifteen different jewels before covering them up and asking Kim to describe what he has seen. Kim isn't that good at the game to start with—the little Hindu boy totally schools Kim in their first few rounds—but practice really improves Kim's observational skills.
Quote #8
'It is more, chela. Thou hast loosed an Act upon the world, and as a stone thrown into a pool so spread the consequences thou canst not tell how far.'
This ignorance was well both for Kim's vanity and for the lama's peace of mind, when we think that there was then being handed in at Simla a code-wire reporting the arrival of E23 at Delhi, and, more important, the whereabouts of a letter he had been commissioned to—abstract. Incidentally, an over-zealous policeman had arrested, on charge of murder done in a far southern State, a horribly indignant Ajmir cotton-broker, who was explaining himself to a Mr Strickland on Delhi platform, while E23 was paddling through byways into the locked heart of Delhi city. In two hours several telegrams had reached the angry minister of a southern State reporting that all trace of a somewhat bruised Mahratta had been lost; and by the time the leisurely train halted at Saharunpore the last ripple of the stone Kim had helped to heave was lapping against the steps of a mosque in far-away Roum—where it disturbed a pious man at prayers. (12.34-5)
The lama sees Kim's bit of cunning in transforming Agent E23 into a Saddhu holy man and completely disapproves. While the lama admits that Kim's healing of the Punjabi farmer's son was a good deed, he thinks that Kim's behavior with E23 was just Kim showing off his skills. And since Kim can't really explain about being a spy to the lama, he just lets the lama think the worse of him (even though it hurts him to do so).
Still, while the lama makes some wrong assumptions about Kim's motivation in this scene, he does say something absolutely true: that Kim's cunning has "loosed an Act upon the world." Kim can't know the huge effects that his disguise for E23 have had on a range of other people trying hard to assassinate the poor man. Kipling suggests that there are these big networks of causes and consequences for all of the little deeds that Kim and his friends do as agents of the British Indian Secret Service. But the weird thing is that none of these agents will ever really see the big picture.
The only person in the book who might come close to seeing all of these larger patterns is Creighton—and the narrator himself, of course.
Quote #9
'See here the Hell appointed for avarice and greed. Flanked upon the one side by Desire and on the other by Weariness.' The lama warmed to his work, and one of the strangers sketched him in the quick-fading light.
'That is enough,' the man said at last brusquely. 'I cannot understand him, but I want that picture. He is a better artist than I. Ask him if he will sell it.'
'He says "No, sar,"' the Babu replied. The lama, of course, would no more have parted with his chart to a casual wayfarer than an archbishop would pawn the holy vessels of his cathedral. All Tibet is full of cheap reproductions of the Wheel; but the lama was an artist, as well as a wealthy Abbot in his own place. (13.59-61)
When Kim hears the lama discussing his illustration of the Great Wheel, he listens respectfully to what the lama has to say. By contrast, in this passage, we see this Russian agent insist on buying the lama's painting—he doesn't understand that the lama has drawn this design, not as a piece of art for sale, but as a teaching tool and as part of his faith. And the Russian refuses to listen to anyone, including the lama, when they try to tell him that the Great Wheel can't be bought for money.
This exchange is actually really important for showing what Kipling thinks of Britain's competition with other European powers for imperial domination of India. Here Kipling strongly implies that the British belong in India because they get it better than the Russians. Kim respects the lama, whereas the Russian agent tears his painting and then hits him in the face.