BITS FROM BOOK AND MAGAZINE

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 135, 21 January 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

BITS FROM BOOK AND MAGAZINE

IN THE OLDKX DAYS. "| That low, solemn sound is*the chanting of the monks within the church, and here are cne or two of the brothers hastening in to take their placed at prayer. Standing on the steps of th? ; open porch of the chapter-house, we watch them luinying along the cloisters. Then we, too, follow them to the church doorway at the western end of the long nave. Oh, how cool and dark and dimly (solemn the whole church is with the monkish crowd chanting away up yonder near the altar steps and the" summer sunlight streaming through the painted windows, to lay the open floor of the nave in a perfect mosaic of moving colours. How far away the no : sy. evil world seems in this vast cathedral, where the tapers are burning on the high altar! Somewhere in tue autumn world outby the loud-mouthed burghers must be laughing over their ale, or standing behind their counters to bargain for gain over their silks and foodstuffs, and the busy harvesters must .still be toiling over the corn-sheaves by the sweat of their brow. But here a crowd of holy men are praying in the mystic gloom, that the sins of tnc worldling may be to-- j given, as thev cross themselves before the Hoa' I'iCoCiice. And here, too, on the :, .t i.y days, the common people crowd in to hear a preaching friar ( thundering out the word of God. So, ; with a prayer for ourselves and for them, we ride from our knees on the , cold stoneflags, and steal out again in- ( to the blazing sun to watch the crowd ' of holy men processing from tnc churcn j to the plain-song of a hymn. The cloisters and the outer courts are now ! crowded with monks coming and going on their holy business —for this vast community of brothers in Christ literally teems with interest and activity. In these monasteries the whole book trade of the world in musical, manuscript, and illumined scroll is carried on. Within the precincts are to be found the greatest men of the day—statesmen, historians, artists, musicians, lawyers, medical men, poets, schoolmasters, craftsmen, and expert farmers. As we climb the stair to the library above, the chapter-house, some, one is speaking in a low even voice. It is the master of the scribing monks instructing his pupils. There they are sitting at little tables, with their vellumsheets and skins, writing, illuminating, and painting with the rarest pigments the initial letters, and ornaments of missals and psalters. Passing through the fratry, or day-room of the monastery, wo enter the refectory, a long low-roofed hall abutting on the south end of the cloister court, where the monks are now filing ; n to taice their midday meal at the long oaken tables. And next to the refectory comes the hospitium or guest-house. which runs along the whole western length of the quadrangle. There all strangers are welcomed as. guests of the abbot. —From a chapter on "The Monks and their Tranquil Homes of Praver," in T. Rateliffe Burnett's new took, "The Makers of the Kirk." (T. X. Foulis, London and Edinburgh.) AX ANXIOUS MOMENT. "There was once a girl who was engaged to be married to a dentst," Mrs. Crumpleby was saying in her particularly penetrating voice, " but for certain reasons sh'e broke off her engagement with him. Unluckily, only a few weeks after she had done so she was seized with the most violent toothache. It was a very quiet country p'ace, and the next nearest dentist was mles away, so there was nothing loi it for the poor girl but to go to her rejected lover and implore his help. He was very kind, and examined her teeth, and told her she must have chloroform at once while he pulled one of*thcni out. She was in such pain that she submitted at once, and he gave her the chloroform. The sight of her, however, under chloroform had such an oH'ect upon the dentist, who still loved | her frantcally, that he went quite mad, and when she came to again what do you think she found bun doing!-''' Mrs. Crumpleby looked round upon sit all with a smile. I glanced hurriedly and .surreptitiously round the table. 1 shall never forget the look of strained anxiety on every face and the frozen horror on Borengaria's. There was no nvoidng the end of the story now. Xot one of us was going on with course before us. The sweets lay untouched on our plates. We were all awaiting the denouement with breathless interest "What do you think die found him doing?'' repeated Mrs. Crumpleby. Again she smiled round the table, evidently keenly enjoying having caught the general attent'on. 1 think we were all trembling as to what might be coming. If it was anything very bad, the horrified silence that would follow would be too rwful. Mrs. Crump'ebv's previous stories had been so 'risque' that one was prepared for :in.vtliintr, and there seemed so many dreadful things a dentst who had gone mad might do under the circumstance-. The suspense was nerve-rack pg. Then when at hist she considered we were sufficiently worked up Mrs. Crumpleby threw her bombshell. "She found him." she said slowly, "pulling out all her teeth one by one, saving. 'She loves me. she loves me not.' Wasn't it dreadful?" From

"More Adventures of an A.D.C.", by Shelland Bradley. (.John Lane,' due Uodley Head, London.) MADAME MELBA AND TOSTI'S "GOOD-BYE." . The term "old-fashioned" may be applied by some to Tosti's "Good-bye," but only for the reason that it was written long ago; because there is in it that wlvch never grows old, never fades—a heart. People have come to my concerts, so they assured me, on purpose to hear that one song. Everywhere in English-speaking countries 1 have tMing it, and audiences here understood and loved it. King Edward asked me to sing it; 1 have sung it to Queen Alexandra and the Empress Mother of Russia, and to many other exalted ones. It lias touched the same chord with them as with all others, for it is a song knowing no distinction of rank in its appeal. Simple, direct, the burden of it* words touches a response in everv heart that has loved and suffcrcJ. "in Tosti's "Good-bye" there s notlrng of the melodramatic or theati rical, no straining for great and over- \ whelming effects. Its charm lies instead in quite another direction a strain of genuine feeling laying bare happiness, a facing of all the hopeless the heart, song of good-bye to love and to-morrows. In anything .Ming nothing . more important than the words, and , this becomes truer than ever in song* ' of the type of Tosti's "Good-bye." No j matter how familiar the words may be to the listener, it is imperative that thev be uttered as clearly with every rendition as if they had never been heard before. As a fact, only in that way can any song be g : ven vitality and pu'sing lite', for the singer's mission is to re-create in the song the message oi the poet who wrote the words, as well as the spirit of the composer who wrote the melody. Many an hour have ! spent in reciting words before a mirror, and with mv teeth t'ghtly shut, speaking only with the lips so that finally the muscles of my lips become strong enough to carry each syllable to the furthest corner of the hall. English is not an impossible language to sing! it is nob'e, beautiful, and expressive; and to those of us whose native tongue it is, none other brings as full a meaning. The trouble is that English is murdered by bad methods and pronunciation. Madame Melba, in "Two Favourte Songs and how I Sung Them," an article in "Cassell's Magaz'ne of Fiction." DIRTY DICK. He was a Swede. Once he had been ,a smart young sailor, but a fall from a tops'l yard had shattered his nerve, and n</vv, although he had shipped witn us as an A.8., he wr.s utterly incompetent aloft. Before lie found this out, he near 1 }- accounted for two good seamen on the footrope of a mum to'galian'. It is no light f.iing to have a strong man's arms thrown around you : suddenly when you are busy at the bunt. Dick was amazingly drty. 1 should curdle your blood if I o; red to enter into the fulsome? details of his dirtiness. Suffice it is to say that after three davs at sea the men bundled him out of the fo'c's'le and made him pitch his "donkey's breakfast" under the fo'c's'le head. He had no clothes when he came aboard. Everything had to come from the slop-chest. Wages, if I remember rightly, were £3 a month out of Cardiff that vovage, and Dick signed, on for the full three. He was worth something we'l below ss. However, as, in the end, he did not touch a penny ■ ave the sum he owed the slop-chest, that did not matter over-much. Tito why anil the wherefore of this shall be disclosed in due course. Dick never washed. The only inadequate cleans'ng he had aboard that ship was in the Doldrums, when the Bosun forcibly divested him of Irs clothes and turned him out on the deck, naked, to stand in the torrential rain. Even that was of little use on Dick. If you have ever; «een water fall on a duck's back—or if you have tried to wash your hands after greasy work—you can form some idea of the effect of rain upon Dick's body. I remember once, when we were rounding the Horn in as nice a gale of wind as ever blew in that pestilential p'ace, coming upon Dick under the fo'c's'le head. He was in oilsk : n.s. His moustache was congealed with the leavings of many days of pea-soup diet. Streams of tobacco juice ran from either corner of his mouth. It was soft-tack day the tri-weekly festival whereon the sailorman is g'ven baker's bread that would astonish the digest;on of an ostrich. Die* had his whack of soft-tack in one hand, and was munching away at it merrily; but as I passed be paused awhile, and bit a chew of tobacco from lis ping. Then no went on mating the soft-tack. By "Shellback," in the "Globe." REALITY OF THE UNSEEN. So long has it been the* custom for men to assert their belief in that which they see, and the'r utter disbelief in that which is unseen, that it needs an active crusade to affirm that which common knowledge in the Aposto'ic age —viz,, that it is the things we see

that are illusory and ephemeral, and the things which are not seen that are real and eternal. We, living and moving in matter,, in three-d mensiomil space, have found that matter is solid and tangible, and so we call it real. Jn spite of the tact, now scientifically vouched for. that all matter is in a state of flux, called radio-act vity—that nothing is permanent, but all things (hanging —we still persist m our illusion that matter is stable, while as for those things beyond the ken of the live senses, they are often called mere hallucinations, and people who say that they can see that which we cannot see aro regarded as poor, deluded fools. Now, let us study this a little more closely. We are all of us acquainted with the fact that some people are colour-blindr Would you assert that the colour which he cannot see, though you see it clearly, is non-existent, and is but a delus on of your own brain? And, if not, why do you who see not the finer ethereal forms ..till through which the voice of Nature is speaking to the soul, tell those who can see that they are deluded? 1 will tell you why. Because not live per cent, of the people understand the phenomenon of vision. We see by virtue of the eye catching, and responding to. the stimulus of v Oratory energy outside; and when that stimulus is below our range, or above our range, we fail to grip the message. But it is there all the same. For instance, red is the first colour we perceive when the etheric vibration s about 32.000 per second. By gradua rises, one colour fades and merges into another, until witli an agitation of •100 millions per second we reach the violet, and. so far as mortal sight 's concerned, we finish. But we know, from the experiments of that eminent scientist. Professor Hertz, that the vibrations can reach three trillions per second. Think of the beauties hidden from our v : ew here, and think of the further fact that hearing is similarly affected.—Hansom J. Hey, in "The International Psychic Gazette." MUDDLING. Xot to every woman is allotted the blessed gift of order and organisation. Some there are who are born methodical, but the muddler is none too rare. She is, in fact, in the majority. "The unmethodical appear to be the pathetic vict ; ins of their own mismanagement. It is they themse'ves who usually suflo" most. Almost always their families escape the consequent d scomfort and confusion because muddlers are, generally speaking, wonderfully goodnatured, self - forgetting, unselfish, how or other to work matters easy-going people. They contrive someround in the long run, so that, as uiey quite joyfully declare, "it all comes right in the wash." Wei', I'm sure \ hope it alwavs does, and will, come right in the wash, only I do think the wear and tear of constant labour leaves its mark upon her features, and it leaves its mark noon her mind as well. She feels aged and weary when she nibdit feel young and fresh, and on the well-established theory that all work and no plav makes Jack a duH boy, this fatal panning out of domestic duties, muddling, dawdling, dreaming, is damaging al ke to mind and manners. Could" you not, dear muddler, adopt just a few definite home rules in the management of things domestic, and so save voursclf from growing faded, worn, jaded, and uninteresting. 100 often has it been said" that woman s work is never done. It is the expression of au idea wirch might well be trampled down if muddlers won d studv method. Meanwhile you scramb.e on for davs, weeks, month's, ye:frs, you scuttle through life in ;; haphazard fashion, and' to quote the words o. coster notorotv, "you've on'y got voursclf to blame." The pity of it.Marie Blanche, in Good Health. ' SERBIAN MUD. A ladv doctor serving in the Scott'sh Hospital in Serb.a, writing on October 2 from Valieva to friend; in Glasgow, says that the fighting had not then darted to take place. Practically every Serb marries a woman older than himself, and she procures the maintenance for both whle he fights. Two boys, in the writer's ward were married when thev were fifteen years of age and now were seventeen, and had families All the males between eighteen and fifty had been < ailed up, and now every patient, except tvphoids was sent on disnrssal from hospital, straight regiment. It was said that the .Serbian Army had never been so well eonipped or so ready as it was then. I Its intr.ct condition was due to "it < ' native and unsurpassable mud." \\ ben 1 there was rain' thev could practically take all the men from the frontier, as no enemv could make any headway, so ! great and deep was the mud. Now, as one went along the roads there could be seen here and there queerioking honey pomts, winch on lnvest<oit;on turned out to be the ends of bullock's horns. The beasts had been dragging gun.; during the retreat of i the Austrians last winter, and had got ! stuck in the mud, and their protruding horns now formed their own little crosses and monuments. All round there were to be found the e.natomcal remains of horses, bullocks, and men.