LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2896, 15 September 1909, Page 82

LITERATURE.

' BOOK NOTICES. " A Little Green World." By J. E. Buckrose. London : Hutchinson and Co. Dunedin : Braithwaite and Co 3s 6d and 2s 6d. " I'm bo happy," said Mr Banning, "that I feel as if I should like to give a dinner with champagne to all the world." This is just the feeling that Mr (surely it is Mrs or Miss — no mere man could so ajialy&e a woman's heart) gives to the reader of " A Ldttl* Green World." A sort 01 general uplift; a sense of hilarity and freedom : a broad, cheerful view of humanity and life in general ; a kindly, geniaJ way of regarding the foibles of our neighbour, and, incidentally, our own ; and, withal, a most keen sense of the absurdities, the inconsistencies, the pettiness, the folly, of quite amiable and superior people. Our author seea them all, and condones them all ; and not that only, but he emphasises, so strongly the best side of each one that the faults and failings seem only the necessary shadows in too bright a picture. Lydia Bell, the , heroine, is an absolutely delightful young woman, one of those rare individuals whose instinct it is "to warm herself, in the coldest moments of misery, by lighting a , 1 fire of joy for someone else" ; who has sympathy and a helping hand for the most j seemingly uninteresting persons — the over- j worked parson's wife, the neglected oldmaid, the woman who does not get an invitation to a party, and the woman whose \ "table" is not praised at the local flower show. Real grievances, fancied "slights," find Lydia. equally, sympathetic, simply because she "understands" — another illustration of the wise Eastern saying "that to know all is to forgive all." But Lydia, like the busy bee, which in so many ways she resembles, is by no means all honey, cloyingly sweet ; for with tlie sting in her tongue she knows well how to defend herself and her friends from prying intruders of both sexes. ■/ Her keen insight and ready wit enable her to turn th© tables again and again, on would-be tormentors ; 1 and always she hides her own pain, for i most strongly does she hold that it is weak and cowardly, almost immoral, to weai I ' one's heart upon one's sleeve and so make other peopte more unhappy than they need be. Nor is she alone in this fine heroism, ; the man whom she loves ' and the man who loves her are alike en- | dowed with the same power of self-nega- ] tion ; all three know that great as is the , one supreme love of man and maid, it is not the whole of life, nor will its gratification fill the whole horizon of a manysided human being ; that there are other duties, other pleasures, other loves "All her life Lydia had straightened her shoulders and held up her head to bear the consequences of her own mistakes. It did not occur to her to cast the burden on anybody else," and so, when it seems to her that she has lost the most desirable thing in life, she does not pity herself j over much or give up the struggle. Mr Buckrose haa not spent all his skill' on the major characters of his little drama ; each thumb-nail sketch is a finished picture. Hare we find the spoiled Mary Markham, who has had her own way all her life, and who cries for a lover as she had once cried for a doll, and soon "finds out the sawdust" in each, and hastens to fling ths toys away, reaching out a greedy hand for others ; the "family taste for comfort" | of Mrs Bell and her sister, who hold ! "that it is almost wicked t< do what one > 'is not equal to,' but revolve in a little world of a maid, a dog, and the illus"strated paper . . . cups of soup and glasses of wine, whose medical names made them respectable" ; the aspiring Mrs Henry Dobson and her no 1e.«.« adventurous yis-ler-in-law ; the poor parson, who is constantly being "cut off" by the butcher, yet spends part of a much iieeded legacy | in the purchase of an impossible gown of , vivid blue for Uift beloved and overtaxed , wife And above all. there is Tommy ' Now. Tommy is. next to Lydia herself, the mot delightful creation in the book. He ' U the six-and-a-half-year-old son of the , ])for par-son, and "the tail-end of a long 1 f-imily," and he is absolutely unique — , a marvellous child-study, nil of imaginn- ' tion, yet taking every word literally ; full | of mischief, yet ttneter-hearted in the ; extreme ; brave a« a Lion, yet fri^htenM ' of his own shadow ; a bundle of nerves and strange spiritual intuition, and yet liable to over-eating and its natural conse- , qupnees ; a dangerous truth-teller, oontinu- j ally reducing his elders to shame : a tell- ] tale through ignorance, a marplot by 1 1 inadvertence ; a perfect child-study, but by ro means a perfect child. And what ! is the p-etting of this delightful slorv? Well is it named "A Little Green World: j a microcosm, a world within a world | Deep in the heart of '"the little preen world" all the drama is played out ; here "Lydir walking at noon feels the exc^uibite fcease tW every country-lover

knows of being on the bord«rland of something much more lovely still. Nobody on such a day, in such a noontide hour, would be & bit surprised to see a lane open into Paradise — only a familiar Paradise, still green, still golden, — just more -wonderful But Lydia no more thought all this than we should if we were there, because there are two kingdoms that men can only enter as the children, do — the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of little green places." One more quotation, and we must end this long notice of a uniquely attractive book, which our readers cannot do better than buy and read for themselves. "All the little green world lay under the hush and glow which rests on country places in a fine year, just before harvest starts. The corn 6tood brave and straight, the apples were turning red, blackberries purple. Everyone must have notioed how mystery broods in those last days wliile harvest waits. What a wonderful golden freshness the dewy mornings have! How pageant-like the sun goes J down 'at night ! . It is a town-bred fallacy to think country labourers don't feel the fflory and mystery of the passing seasons — at' ie often the one thing beyond the elemental necessities of their lives that they do feel" : but, like many others, ttieyare dumb. It is only the gifted few who can put these emotions into words without spoiling them altogether, and of these few certainly Mr (or Mrs or Miss) J. E. Buckrose is one. " The Conversion of Con Oegan, and Other Stories." By Dorothea Conyers. London .- W. Heinemaim end Co. Dunedin : J. Braithwaite and Co. 3s 6d and 2s 6d. Mrs Conyers has already earned a reputation by her humorous sporting novels, and the present volume of short stories cannot but increase her fame, since it shows an added power, for it is not always the au'jhor who excels in creating and maintaining the interest of a continuous novel who exhibits the dramatic sense and powers of concentration required for a really good short story. Most of the tales in the .present volume are concerned with hunting and hunting experiences in some form or another, a few add a. racing interest. One at least — "A Last Practical . Joke" — is as good a ghost story as we have met with for some time, and " The Vision of the Dark Woman" has more than a touch of the occult and a hint of "thought-reading" and "modern witchcraft." All the stories air* full of' the kindly Irish humour which sees the lighter side of life and has not in it one grain of bitterness or sarcasm ; this is shown to perfection in the name story, "The Conversion of Con Oregon," in which, the said. Con Creet^n, an agitator and a leader of the "Ballydare .Steadfast League,'' intent on defending the rights of the -farmers and cotters as against the M.F.H and members of the hunt, falls before the Irishman's temptation of a good horse and " a bit of sphort," eats his own words, and becomes an ardent convert to the principles and tactics of his sometime enemies, for, like many other converts, he is made to feel that "it is strange how offensive our I own eloquence may become when it is ! quoted from one fide of a locked "gate ' which the originator of the eloquence ] wishes to get through."