THE READERS' COLUMN

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 12, 14 June 1913, Page 6

THE READERS' COLUMN

(By James Wortley). ] ". THE AMATEUR GENTLEMAN. Jeffrey Farnol is to be congratulated i upon tlie very high mark he reaches 1 among present-day novelists, and so long ] as he continues to write stories like 1 "Tlie Amateur Gentleman" he will not < be displaced. Mr. Farnol's hero and i heroine always manage to walk upon 1 the side of the road, whatever their c ups and downs in life may be. Barnabas ( Barty is the beau ideal of what a man i should be. From his father, who, by i ; the way, is a lovable old fellow, and' as 1 been the ring'champion of England be inherits a perfect physical frame. Jn i the distaff side there comes to him the ( natural grace of character, and refinement f from a long line of gentle ancestry. Here < we have our hero possessed of every desirable attribute but wealth. This is ' i supplied in the earlier stages of the < •book. A good-for-nothing brother of i the "champion of England" dies in'Ja- ; maica," 1 leaving seven hundred thousand i 'pounds to Barnabas. The "champion" '. , thinks his son may now set out to pur- i chase the best "pub" in England, but Barnabas dashes the fond paternal hopes to the ground to become a gentleman. "Ahi" nodded John, "and serve you right, lad; because if you should try to turn yourself into a gentleman, why, Lord, Barnabas, you'd only be a sort of amitoor arter all, lad!" "Then," said Barnabas, rising from his chair, and cross iwith f&? door, "then'; vj.usfcta'ioQn law Business -is set-., tied,, and the 'money ari' 'amateur'' . gentlejfil&n I'lt.Me." And so it is that •the'youth sets oujj.to;conquer London. Of his success in doing so we read through nearly six hundred pages, not one of which is dull. Cleone never disappoints us, and the Duchess is a splendid woman, though an inveterate matchmaker. She plots "and f Couriter-plots to some purpose as the tale-proceeds. No Hacker scoundrel has been painted than ;the calculating Chichester, and John .Gaunt, the : money-lender, haunts the fashionable world of the young bloods of London like an evil spirit. Quite in 'the style of the knights of the crusading period, Barnabas protests with a noble ; chivalry the gentle Clemency. The characters of the book are introduced with , the prodigality of a Dickens or a Thackeray, and some day a 20th century "Phiz" will illustrate a superb editisn of "The Amateur Gentleman," so that we shall come to know Smivole and Barnabas, the ..faithful Peterby, the Viscount, Cleone, ,and the honest Shrig, as well as we now .know ,Weller, Copperfleld, Micawber ,6r Little Em'ly. the story moves with : a great wealth of description to the inevitable and happy conclusion every ■, .reader delights in. But perhaps its setting in the early years of the last cen- . ,tury lends itself to the more effectual portrayal of the elemental passions of . human nature—love and hate—than does ,:' 'the prosaic twentieth century period in which our modern culture leaves little , room for ' individuality, but files the i rough corners off men an'd women till they resemble so many tin soldiers—all exactly alike. THREE NEW NOVELS. In "A Desert Rose," by. Mrs, Daskein (London: vVm. Heinemann), we have a very readable story, of Australian life, more particularly of squatter-dom in the hinterland of New South Wales. After ■. spending her school years in Melbourne Betty goes up to Bunna Bundra to join her widowed father. In this "way-bacK" country she is dubbed the "desert rose," and enjoys the popularity we might expect for a cultured town-bred girl amongst the station holders. G. A. Birmingham is a novelist whose popularity is steadily-growing, and in "Dr: Whitty" (London: Methuen and jCo.) we have another of those delightfully humorous tales of Irish life he has familiarised us with. It is, moreover, quite up to the minute, introducing in the shape of Mfes Mulhall, ; lecturer on "material education," the political woman of the day. We do not know what the suffragettes would say to Miss Mulhall striking the flag and marrying the doctor, nor of Flaherty and the Colonel, who think it is quite all right. In "The Seeond-sighter's Daughter," by G. B. Burgin (London: Hutohinson and Co.) we have another addition to the '. novels on t&e occult, Wor whiclty howeverclever they may be, we have little' appreciation. For those who do like this sort, this story has a number of dramatic situations, which are duly shrouded by mystery. NOTES. Apropos of "Liber's" note in last Saturday's Dominion on Carlyle as a bookborrower, reminds me of a friend, whose father was for years Carlyle's neighbor ■ at Chelsea, who possesses a unique memento of Carlyle. It is a notice from the London library to return a book which the authorities assert Carlyle had retained over long. Across the printed form Carlyle has written in blue pencil much as follows (I have not the original hy me to compare the exact text): "I do not lenow your precious Book, have never had it, have never read it, nor do I care to read it.—T.O." Twelve addresses by President Woodrow Wilson have been, issued in book form under the title of "The New Freedom: A call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People" (Chapman and Hall, 7s 6d). Professor Wilson thus describes his own book in the preface:—"An attempt to express the new spirit of our politics, and to sot forth, in ■large tftrjns whi<<h may stick in tue ima-1 ginaticra, what It is that must be done if we are to restore our politics to their full spiritual vigor again, and our national life, whether in trade, in industry, or what concerns us only as families and individuals, to its/purity, its selfrespect, and its pristine strength and 'freedom. It is a call to the patriotic, and to all who wish to be free. The new freedom is only the old revived and clothed in the unconquerable strength of modern America." The Cambridge manuals (University . Press)), at fifteen pence, in quite a large .'■ number of cases break fresh ground among cheap editions. The volumes are now complete to the number of sixty, and the titles of about vthirty more are announced. The subjects that have received most attention so far as History Archaeology, with eleven books, Liti erai;y History with ten, and Biology, with .'■ nine books.•""'' "' ; " Three most interesting volumes have reached us, per A. S. Booker. These are "The Vikings," by Allen Mawcr, M.A.; « "The Icelandic Sagas," by W. A. Craigie, j] L.L.D., and "The Wanderings of Peo--11 pies," by A. C. Adden, Sc.D.. F.R.S. This last book is admirably illustrated by h'v« maps ..showing the various routes taken. The; text is lucidly written' for and. the latest novel. The reasons for the J various migrations are carefully sifted out, and results summarised. "The Vik- '• : m<ih" deals with the history and move- < ment of these famous northmen, and of t course in a more elaborate and detailed form. "The Icelandic Sagas" is the name given to a mass of literature deal- » ing with the people of that remote isj land during tjie twelfth to the fifteenth t century. Most of this is written in biographical form in which fact and fiction 1 arc: strongly interwoven. In the deeds t these records tell of there appears a t kinship between these hardly Icelanders and the Vikings oi curlier centuries. We have to acknowledge receipt of the above books for review from Mr. A. S. Booker, Devon street.