His poor eyesight slowed his progress in school. His only relief during these years was an occasional holiday visit to his aunt, who was married to the painter Edward Burne-Jones. There Kipling played with his cousins, enjoyed the company of William Morris, and fortified his spirit for the return to Southsea and the "house of desolation."
From 1878 to 1882 Kipling attended the United Services College in Westward Ho!, Devon, a fairly new institution established primarily for, but not limited to, the sons of military officers. Kipling's stories in Stalky & Co. (1899) grew out of this experience. At the age of almost seventeen, obviously unsuited for a military life, Kipling returned to India as reporter, assistant editor, and general factotum for the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore; later he moved to Allahabad to work on the newspaper, the Pioneer. He fell in with the pace of Indian life as though he had never left the country. His observation of the British civil, diplomatic, and military establishment in India resulted in 1886 in his first published book of poems, Departmental Ditties. Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) was a collection of stories based on the lives of the British at their summer mountain retreat, Simla.
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