THERE was never a Queen like Balkis , From here to the wide world 's end ; But Balkis tailed to a butterfly As you would talk to a friend . There was never a King like Solomon , Not since the world began ; But Solomon talked to a butterfly As a man would talk to a man . Chapter 1 O ye who tread the Narrow Way By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day , Be gentle when ` the heathen ' pray To Buddha at Kamakura ! Buddha at Kamakura . He sat , in defiance of municipal orders , astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher -- the Wonder House , as the natives call the Lahore Museum . Who hold Zam-Zammah , that ` fire-breathing dragon ' , hold the Punjab , for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror 's loot . There was some justification for Kim -- he had kicked Lala Dinanath 's boy off the trunnions -- since the English held the Punjab and Kim was English . Though he was burned black as any native ; though he spoke the vernacular by preference , and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song ; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar ; Kim was white -- a poor white of the very poorest . The half-caste woman who looked after him -LRB- she smoked opium , and pretended to keep a second-hand furniture shop by the square where the cheap cabs wait -RRB- told the missionaries that she was Kim 's mother 's sister ; but his mother had been nursemaid in a Colonel 's family and had married Kimball O'Hara , a young colour-sergeant of the Mavericks , an Irish regiment . He afterwards took a post on the Sind , Punjab , and Delhi Railway , and his Regiment went home without him . The wife died of cholera in Ferozepore , and O'Hara fell to drink and loafing up and down the line with the keen-eyed three-year-old baby . Societies and chaplains , anxious for the child , tried to catch him , but O'Hara drifted away , till he came across the woman who took opium and learned the taste from her , and died as poor whites die in India . His estate at death consisted of three papers -- one he called his ` ne varietur ' because those words were written below his signature thereon , and another his ` clearance-certificate ' . The third was Kim 's birth-certificate . Those things , he was used to say , in his glorious opium-hours , would yet make little Kimball a man . On no account was Kim to part with them , for they belonged to a great piece of magic -- such magic as men practised over yonder behind the Museum , in the big blue-and-white Jadoo-Gher -- the Magic House , as we name the Masonic Lodge . It would , he said , all come right some day , and Kim 's horn would be exalted between pillars -- monstrous pillars -- of beauty and strength . The Colonel himself , riding on a horse , at the head of the finest Regiment in the world , would attend to Kim -- little Kim that should have been better off than his father . Nine hundred first-class devils , whose God was a Red Bull on a green field , would attend to Kim , if they had not forgotten O'Hara -- poor O'Hara that was gang-foreman on the Ferozepore line . Then he would weep bitterly in the broken rush chair on the veranda .
So it came about after his death that the woman sewed parchment , paper , and XXXXX into a leather amulet-case which she strung round Kim 's neck .
Bull India Jadoo-Gher Solomon Zammah bazar birth-certificate gang-foreman nursemaid trunnions