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Marlborough Express, Volume LXVIII, Issue 148, 25 June 1934, Page 3

The 1934 edition of Stone 's Canterbury, Nelson, Marlborough and. Westland Direetory has just been issued, for the 33rd suocessive year. The direetory has toeen added to and improved in various ways and the system of indexing of names subject to more than one spellinig, which was introduced last year, has been perfected. The information in regard to the Customs tariff has been carefully revised and the section known as the New Zealand Annual brought thoroughly up to date. The publication should find a place in every business offlice. Evidenee afoout speed is usually given at an inquest, and at inquests dead men tell np tales. — Mr Robert Lynd:. / sfs % * Like Mr Baldwin, Mr Ramsay MacDonald is said to find his greatest recreation in books. He spent a recemt holiday in rearranging his: library. * s! * "I believe that without variety of opinion life would be intolerable — especially without variety of opinion about trifles," says Mr Robert Lynd. ^ The honorary degree of LL.D. is to be conferred on Mr St. John Ervine, dramatist and critic, by St. Andrew's University. The graduation eeremony will take place on June 29. * . * * * % The author of "Napoleon and His Marshals," Mr A. G. Macdonell, pronounces his name with the accent on the last syllalble, according to the New York Times Book * Review. It is added that "it will be well to remember that in case you should meet the gentleman. Many a beautiful friendship has been ruined by a mispronounced name." sj: "Sir Miles had asked to be ealled before they entered the harbour in the mornirig. He had a fancy to see Pencarirow Head again as they came in from the Straits. He had always made comparisons between this, his namesake, as he ealled it, and himself; the proud bluff with its warning light that was visible to shipping twenty miles out to sea. He regarded himself as a similar feature of the professional landscape. . . With a proud impressiveness he would raise his hat; he hoped the igesture would not be misunderstood and laughed at. In these modern times no sentiment was sacred." — "Winds of Heaven," by Nelle M. Scanlan. Vicissitudes of fashion are responsible for many ups . and downs in trade, and the shingied head spelled ruin for many an honest manufacturer of hairpins. The development of traffic, as described in T. W. Wilkinson's book, "From Track to Bypass," has also been followed by strange changes of fortune. Roadhouses, for instance, did a roaring trade in the old posting days, but languished as: the train replaced the coaeh. Now, with all the world travelling by road, the' inns, or those of them that remain, have came into their own onee more. The wheel has turned full circle. "Among the ma jor temptations that assail the detective author (and others)," writes Miss Dorothy L. Sayers in the Sunday Times, "is that of writing the same hook over and over again. Publishers and public ehcourage him to do so, because they like "toi know what to expect. Then, quite suddenly, they turn on the poor man and rend him, eomplaining that his books are all alike and that he has written himself out. The author, who is probably as heartily weary of the book as they are, but has1 been too timid to abandon a vein which has hitherto paid very well, is then faced with the task of starting all over again, under a. heavy handicap." ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ * Describing a trip from Blenheim to Christchurch in her latest ibook, "Winds of Heaven," Nelle Scanlan says : — "The car followed the winding road among the wide undulating grasslands and the wide shoulders of the hills, and then came out to the ooast, turning, twisting, rising, dipping sharply, ascending again. Now the Pacific swept in-to view, a startling immensity of vivid blue-green shimmering in the sunlight that had melted the inland frost. Here the road ran along the face of the cliff. Great buttresses rose from the sea, and wave after wave rolled lazily in, the long line of 'breakers fringed with spray that beat upon the rocks, dark and jagged, with shadows like velvet, blue-grey and mauve-black. Then the water rolled foack in sullen defeat and came again, to break in a, foaming iridge and fling a fountain high in the air." ^ ^ ^ Mr W. B. Yeats, in one. of his ea;rly articles ^for American journals now collected as "Letters to the New Island," tells of William Allingham: "He was greatly troubled by a eustom his brother had of writing poems and publishing them in the Bally shannon papers by way of jokes, with the name of William Allingham at the foot. When one remembers his fastidiousness and his, constant habit of polishing and repolishing all he wrote, one can well imagine his indignation." * * * * * Jiournalists from other lands are not free agents in Russia, says Mr Malcolm Muggeridge, in "Winter in Russia." He states that they work under the perpetual threat of losing their visas, and therefore their jobs. Unless they consent to limit their news to what they know will not be displeasing to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, they are subjected to continuous persecution. * jje * Walter Savage Landor had many notable friendships with. women, and ! was extremely fond of l'emale society. | Yet comparatively few of the pro- , tagonistsi of his 'Traaginary Conversations" are women. Mr H. C, Minchin, in his new book on the Old Lion, mcludes1 two "conversations," one of which deals with the most farnous love story in the world. — that of Abelard and Heloise — never prevtously printed. He sfs Jfe ifs As a tribute to Vernon Lee (Miss ( , Vioiet Paget), a distinguished writer Who has lived in Italy for many years, ft

her play "Ariadne in . M&ntua" was perf'ormed in Florence in April. Among the books of essays and mis-cellanie-s by Vernon Lee are "Renaissance Fancies and Studies," "Laurus Ndbilis: Chapters on Art and Life," "The Spirit of Rome," "The Sentimental Traveller," and "The Enchanted Woods." She has also written a number of stories, such as those collected in "Vanitas" and "Hauntings." Hi # Thirteen was the age of the Russia, n author Michael Sholokov when his school studies were broken off by the 'arrival in 1918 of the German army of oocupation. His novel of Cossack life, "And Quiet Flows the Don," now publishecl in Englisl\ by Putnam, was begun in 1926. His first stories were published in 1924. Under the Soviet regime in 1920 M. Sholokov ' became a. teaicher, and at later times he was an ofhcial in the collection of foodstuffs, a food inspector, a goods porter, a statistician, a: bookkeeper, and a journalist. * * * * * Wilfred Owen was a young poet to whom fame came only posthumously. He was killed in France in the last week of the war, and a few days after winning the Military Cross. He was only twenty-hve^ but he had found time to write some of the most moving poems that the war inspired. His output was pathetically small, but enough to prove that the stuff of genius was in him. Last month his surviving manuscriflts, some in a volume edited by two other young war poets, Siegfried Sassoon and Edward Blunden, some still on loose sheets of paper, were presented to the British Museum. They had been acquired for the nation by an organisation ealled the Friends of the National Libraries, and wit'h the help of oontributions by leading British writers such as Hifgh Walpole, Walter de ,1a Mare, H. M. Tomlinson, some publi'shfers, and* a* few others. Young Owen had a rare mind; the she 11 that killed him dealt an inestimable blow to literature.