(Between fiddling around on the Web, reworking the sixth draft of my novel, and baking cookies for my daughter.)

Kipling's "Captains Courageous," one of my favorite Kipling books, and the model for a number of Heinlein's "young man learns something" books.

The edition I have, an ancient book plucked years ago from some used bookstore for four bucks, is exactly 100 years old, published in 1908.

It's number XII in an apparent published collection of Kipling books. I don't have any of the others, but I have a lot of other Kipling in other editions.

It's printed on thick rag stock with rough edges, and no yellowing at all. It has three illustrations, lovingly protected by little sheets of translucent vellum bound into the book. On the cover is the logo for the series, a tiny cameo of an elephant and a swastika, from an era where "swastika" still meant "India."

There are two bookplates glued inside the front of the book. The one on the left came with the book, a coat of arms that says "En Avant," with the name "Thomas Albert Rothwell."

A person of that name was married in 1888 at the age of 23 to a Matilda Jane Graham. A Thomas Albert Rothwell was also married in September, 1917 to a Bliss Louise Klots, who was probably overjoyed to ditch her name at last. Different person, or second marriage? A different person, it seems, since a 91-year-old Matilda Rothwell has an obituary in September of 1955 listing her as the widow of the late Thomas Albert Rothwell.

A last footprint--a listing in a used book site describing a 1936 book "My Friend the Indian," with a bookplate in it labeled "Thomas Albert Rothwell."

On the facing page of my book is another bookplate. It's a picture of a galaxy with the words "Ex Libris," and a place underneath where I carefully wrote my own name in script many years ago.

I wonder if someday somebody will be curious about that name.