Nigger singers with their faces blacked singing minstrel songs. In the song "", the Mikado sings of the punishment for older women who dye their hair or wear corsets, to be "Blacked like a nigger/With permanent walnut juice." Both lyrics are usually changed for modern performances. The word "nigger" appears in children's literature. "How the Leopard Got His Spots", in the "Just So Stories" (1902) by Rudyard Kipling, tells of an Ethiopian man and a leopard, both originally sand-colored, deciding to camouflage themselves with painted spots, for hunting in tropical forest. The story originally included a scene wherein the leopard (now
The Novice (poem) English translation The Novice (poem) The Novice (Mtsyri, in Georgian, Мцыри in Russian) is a poem by Mikhail Lermontov written in 1839 and first published in 1840, hailed as "one of the last examples of the classic Russian romantic poetry," according to the Lermontov Encyclopedia. Some Russian scholars (like S. Durylin) consider three poems – "The Confession", "Boyarin Orsha" and "Mtsyry" as three different execution of one original idea. In 1831 15-year-old Lermontov wrote in his diary: "To write the tale of a young 17-year old monk who's lived in a monastery from childhood. Read nothing but the sacred books.