"THE TALK OF LIVING MEN.”

Hokitika Guardian, 10 March 1928, Page 4

"THE TALK OF LIVING MEN.”

(.From the “CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AIONITOE.”) Tn bis biography of Viscount Bryce. | whose “ American Commonwealth ” or thirty-five years ago remains to-day the best textbook of the national and State 1 Governments of the United States, H. A. L. Fisher says that the author estimated that five-sixths of the material in those volumes “ was derived from I conversations with Americans in London and the United States and only one-sixth from books.” From tli'aj springs, beyond doubt, its vitality, its keen insight, its sure and certain grasp of political subjects which are familiar to the American, hut which no other foreign commentator ever comprehended. Air Fisher goes on to say that it may be doubted whether “since the days of antiquity there has ever I been any important historical work written so largely from the talk of living men.” There is a suggestion in this full of value to the practitioner of literature. How many books on American government, compiled painfully in libraries, lie untouched on shelves or unsold in bookshops, while Bryce is still read and saleable? For that matter, how many of the great books of the world are based rather on talks with living men, or the monologues of a man among; men. than upon scholarly compilations of the printed word? Socrates, Alontaigne. Rousseau. Pepys, Cellini. Franklin, Boswell, Emerson—the goodly company of those who saw life and saw it whole, who recorded what men about them were saying or doing, or what their own intellects evolved in all originality—are those who live in the

world of letters. Culture may furnish the background, but life and human companionship hold ever the centre of the stage. A veteran English, journalist tells in his memoirs how he was turned from a compiler into a creative writer by a chance meeting with a journalistic genius. “ 1 was walking along Fleet Street on the way to the Hriti.s! -Museum,” lie writes in substance, “when 1 met Alfred Harmsworth, later to become Lord Northclifie. “ ‘How are you getting on?” lie asked. “ 1 Nothing remarkable.’ 1 responded. ' I’m going up to the library to work up an article now.’ “ * AVhy do you do that? Why don’t you go over to that cabman and take ins call for a day, drive it yourself, and write your experiences? People are tired of reading the things you find in books ; they never weary of reading of personal experiences, especially in those walks of life with which they are familiar.” •'Harmsworth walked on. 1 did # just what ho suggested, ami at times thereafter was a fireman, a super in the theatre, a waiter, a bus umductor. .My work caught on and his prediction was justified.” Always and ever the talk of men, the record of the common round, has been of universal interest. In literature and journalism, the talker and his