HOLIDAY READING: OLD BOOKS AND NEW

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 263, 27 January 1928, Page 14

HOLIDAY READING: OLD BOOKS AND NEW

YVTITH the sound of the surf in one's ** ears all day long, and in the holiday atmosphere of tents, and shanties, bush, and beach, I don’t think one is a fastidious reader. Any old thing, almost, does. But I began badly. I like pictures, and I thought I could read a picture magazine. An error—l could not; it was a debased specimen of literature. Men and women alike, these Hollywood people exploited their physical beauties, leared and coquetted in its pages, and made naive and squalid confessions about their domestic infelicity, or indecently sentimental boasts about their newest matrimonial experiment. So I read “John Ward, Preacher,” by Margaret Deland, and was at once wafted into an Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott atmosphere, quite unlike anything produced by modern American writers. It has a charm of its own; peace and quietness is the background of the story, woven through with trees, flower gardens, the sky, seasonal changes, good cooking, and placid games of whist. It is not without faults. One of the young men in it is a good old-fashioned prig who impairs his chances with the lady he loves by always pointing out her faults, from a sense of duty. He—

noble fellow—loves her so well that he could endure to part with her to his rival, if only the miserable fellow had been fit to make her happy. Next 1 read John Buchan’s new book, “Witch Wood,” and strangely enough it, like “John Ward,” which was written in Boston in 1887, impresses on the reader the harshness and intolerance of Calvin’s form of Christianity. In each story, though the scene is divided by the Atlantic, and the period by more than 200 years, an individual, more enlightened than those whose authority determines his or her practise of religion, rebels, and is made to suffer at the hands of the godly. In John Buchan’s book it is the young minister, and in Margaret Deland’s the minister's wife. John Ward is a fanatic so hopeless in his mental limitations that it seems incredible Helen his wife could continue to love him. He should have had young David Sempill’s parish in 1644, and waged war on malignants, and warlocks; or better still, have joined the American Fundamentalists to-day. "Witch Wood” is an eerie, interesting story, and gives an impressive glimpse of the hard and hellhaunted lives our forbears lived. I also rend again an old story of Barry Pain’s, “The Exiles of Faloo.” it is an excellent and uncommon Pacific Island tale, somehow reminding one of Stevenson. The exiles are rascally, but gentlemanly, fugitives from justice, very anxious to keep their island unknown to tourists and travellers. A young chief who has had some education and holds enlightened views is the native ruler of the island. The arrival of a yacht on which there is a girl causes complications, and the only one of the exiles who is at heart a good fellow has to save her from the perils of the place. A good story and, unlike most novels, altogether 100 brief. Barry Pain’s satirical style is refreshing after a course of too serious, too silly, and too psychological novels. For holidays, above all, a good narrative is the thing. Then Dick Harris’s little book. There are beautiful poems among this dead New Zealander’s verses, but they are stamped with melancholy, even those written before his life suffered the loss of that companion who “was skilled in comforting as though all Mary’s tears had fallen on her heart.” He had great sensitiveness to beauty like all true poets, but regret, a haunting sense of the illusory nature of things, and a sorrowful fortitude echo even through verses like "Ballade of Youths' Day.” The “Cry of Pan,” and “Dawn” are among the few poems that sound a note of joy, hope, and adventure.