Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 12 August 1887.

Attribution: Included in the suppressed City of Dreadful Night, 1890, but not included in any Scrapbook. The attribution is not supported by clear external evidence, but ‘Tods’ is RK's creation, and all of the other stories in the suppressed City of Dreadful Night are correctly assigned to RK. ‘The Judgment of Paris’ deliberately echoes the earlier ‘Tods’ Amendment’ in details; e.g., Tods’ mother is described in both stories as ‘a singularly charming woman’.

Text: Civil and Military Gazette.

Notes: This is the second appearance of the child named ‘Tods’, who is first encountered in ‘Tods’ Amendment’ CMG, 16 April 1887 (Plain Tales from the Hills). Roger Lancelyn Green identifies the stylised childish speech in ‘Tods’ Amendment’ and ‘The Judgment of Paris’ as another exercise in dialect, like the Yorkshire, Cockney and Irish dialects that RK would soon present in Soldiers Three. The model for the children's speech is the American John Habberton's Helen's Babies (1876), a book that set a fashion that ‘was to run riot for twenty years’ (Green, Kipling and the Children, 1965, p. 83). It contains a character named ‘Toddie’. RK's story is set in Simla.

‘The Judgment of Paris’ has been reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets and in Harbord, iii, 1611–13, as well as in the suppressed edition of The City of Dreadful Night.

There had been a children's party near the top of Jakko, and the small guests, weary with frolicking, were going away. Some, however, were absent; and among these was my estimable friend and ally the blueeyed, fearless Tods. There were many reasons for his flight. In the first place, his Bearer, a gaunt Poohbeah was awaiting him. In the second he had, half an hour before, sat down upon the tea-things generally; insomuch that his brown Holland blouse was one messy defilement of jam, treacle, butter, milk and rich black forest-earth. His Mamma, a singularly charming lady, asked me to find Tods; and I sought till I found him, my self unseen, just over the road that leads to the Convent. There was a murmur of children's voices in grave debate. Tods had wriggled himself along the trunk of a moss-grown leaning tree that overhung a tiny path on the hill-side.