Editing Rudyard Kipling (section)

===Return to India===
Near the end of his schooling, it was decided that Kipling did not have the academic ability to get into Oxford University on a scholarship.<ref name="oxfordchildren" /> His parents lacked the wherewithal to finance him,<ref name="gilmour" /> and so Kipling's father obtained a job for him in [[Lahore]], where the father served as Principal of the [[National College Of Arts, Lahore|Mayo College of Art]] and Curator of the [[Lahore Museum]]. Kipling was to be [[sub-editor|assistant editor]] of a local newspaper, the ''[[Civil and Military Gazette]]''.

He sailed for India on 20 September 1882 and arrived in Bombay on 18 October. He described the moment years later: "So, at sixteen years and nine months, but looking four or five years older, and adorned with real whiskers which the scandalised Mother abolished within one hour of beholding, I found myself at Bombay where I was born, moving among sights and smells that made me deliver in the vernacular sentences whose meaning I knew not. Other Indian-born boys have told me how the same thing happened to them."<ref name="autobio" /> This arrival changed Kipling, as he explains: "There were yet three or four days' rail to Lahore, where my people lived. After these, my English years fell away, nor ever, I think, came back in full strength."<ref name="autobio" />