The story opens with the hero, Kim, sitting astride a great cannon “in defiance of municipal orders” (3) in the city of Lahore, British India. At 13 years old, Kim is confident, adventuresome, and whimsical, exuding a boyish charisma that endears him to those he meets. He is known in Lahore as the “Little Friend of all the World” (5). The first scene offers an extended background narration, revealing that although Kim now appears Indian in aspect and language, he is an Irish orphan, the son of a nurse-maid and a sergeant in the Irish regiment. His father, Kimball O’Hara, had later worked on the Delhi Railway and had succumbed to a fatal opium addiction (Kim’s mother having earlier died of cholera). Kim’s father left him with a birth certificate and some Masonic papers, and in his opiate-addled state, he spoke of the promise of Kim’s future, couched in Masonic and regimental terms. These the young Kim remembered, holding them as a sort of prophecy of things to come: “A Red Bull and a Colonel on a horse will come, but first, my father said, will come the two men making ready the ground for these matters” (4).

While sitting on the cannon, Kim and his friends spy a Buddhist lama approaching, and Kim takes an immediate interest in him, following

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