READERS' COLUMN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 318, 18 June 1915, Page 2

READERS' COLUMN.

(!!y Janus YVui'llry). UKAMSU ()!•' Till': SKA. Tli.. .Mutiny of tin- KHsnonv" liv .]:iok London. ('London: Mill* and lloon, Ltd: llHo).

A sled tramp sailor „ut of liall.imure, and hoiiiul. round (in- Horn lor Sc.-itHo with u cargo of ,-oal. a wealthy passeii'rvv.. anil you have" a M-Uiug fnr'a' very ordinary love Mow. especially lis ih\; year is nil;!. .Mr. Jack London, with his Mliv knowledge „!' the V a and ( ,r those that go down thereto, and \vit!i his still rarer unstudied skill of story-telling, v, oa\o- for us a tale of absorbing and intense interest. The day of tho'sailor before the mast who has learnt the business lias gone, and in eonsei|ueiico it is :\ ycr.y rattled crew that are stowed when the Klsi ie puts to sea. "Ordinary seamen!" Mr. I'ike snorted, in reply to a question. ''We -Y:i't rum- 'em. Landsmen, forget i ' livery clodhopper ami cow-wo.lloper these days is an able seaman. That's the way they rank and are paid. The merchant service is all shot to hell. There ain't no more sailors. They all died years ago, before, you were born, even." .Mr. Pallmrst, the passenger, goes up to see the crew come aboard. ''They were the worse for liquor, and a more wretched, miserabb.', disgusting group of men X had never seen in any slum. Their clothes were rags. Their faces were, bloated, bloody and. dirty. i won't say they j wen- villainous. They were merely filthy and vile." /Hut we cannot stay to detail in ■person the crew. Pike., the first male, is easily the. best-drawn character in the book. 'Here we have a dourfaced man who sits at the oMlcers' mess and conducts himself with studied politeness. Among the men whom it is his duly to control he moves like a giant and absolute monarch. ' die towers over them in every physical and menial capacity. He is old, too—sixty-nine years of age—yet signed on the boat as'fiftyfour ami looks'a good man at the age. Pike has lived when clippers were clippers ami sailors were men, better brawn and muscle than, whom England had never produced. l>nt now in the yea.' of grace, ISII3, (he Elsimoro, good sbip though she is. is one of a class almost extinct through the coming of steam power, and likely to be more so because of the dearth of men to handle them. TTo has wonderful tales to tell of the old boats, "The flame Cock." "The Flying Cloud," "The Shooting Star," etc. Tie. was a huge man, with character and physical and mental force to secure the carrying out of his commands. The second mate, Mr. Millaire, is described with equal faithfulness. Indeed, the picture is drawn so artlessly and convincingly from life, yet one would wish it were not as it is described. Jt is a si ething mass of discontented humanity that puts to sea. Many of the men are little .removed from their ape ancestors, and it is small wonder that before the J voyage is out open mutiny rears its ugly [ bead. The 'passage of the Horn is most '■ irraphic. and will rank beside the best of Charles Dana. Indeed, the book l mav rightlv have a place beside "YVcst- ' ward l'lo!''' and "Two Years Before the

Mast." The captain's daughter and Pathurst's interest therein, is but an incident—and a minor one at "ihat—in the book. Tts great portrayal of life at sea is not affected 'by the little love story introduced.

OTHER NOVELS,

"•God's Country—and the Woman," by James Oliver Cunwood, author of "Kazan, the Wolf Dog." (London: Casscll and Co.; 1915). "*

This is a book with a very remarkable plot set in a popular background, the north country of Canada, on the rim of the Arctic. Circle. Phil. Weyinan iri£jt3 in this way-back country a 'woman, and women are so rarely met with hereabouts that it is four years since he has seen one. Phil is white right through. Josephine Adaire finds herself able to trust him to help her in the great trouble which brings her into that country, and which is to remain to him a myS' '.cry for a long time. The author cui> ningly unfolds the mystery, which reveals the fine, nobility of Josephine in shielding the other woman's shame. The book is typical Canadian in its surroundings and character.

NOTES. Professor Cramb's great 'book on the present European situation has received the hall-mark of being reprinted in a cheap edition. Its appearance has already been made in the local shops. Scrihner's have just published Roosevelt's book on the American position in the great war. Mr. Murray nuts his imprint on the English edition.

Frederick Palmer, whose last novel, "The Last Shot," created such a sensation, is to the fore with a book of the war, "Personal Phases of the War." Mr. S. S. McClure, the famous founder of McOlure's Magazine, writes 1r.3 own romantic, history under the title of "My Autobiography." "The Golden Bough," by J. G. Frazer (third edition, in twelve volumes), ia reviewed in the current Quarterly. MaeMillan's have been seven years publishing it. [ have in my possession a number of Quarterlies for the 'seventies. Among the literary notices for 1875 are "The New Ctiriosum Urbis: A Guide to Ancient and Modern Rome," by .Shakespeare Wood; "Shakespeare Diversions." by Francis Jacox: "Bush Fighting: Incidents of the Maori War,<'_by Sir James Alexander; "Ismalia," bv Sir Samuel W. Baker.

ENCHANT). T fell in regard to this aged England, with the possessions, honors and trophies, and also with the infirmities, of a thousand years gathering around her, irretrievably committed as she now is to many customs which eannot he suddenly changed; pressed upon by the transitions of trade and new and all incalculable modes, fabrics, arts, machines. ;;nd competing populations. . . I see her not dispirited, not weak, but. well, remembering that she has seen dark days before; indeed, with a kind of inlsinct that she sees a little better in ;i cloudy day. and that in storm of battle and calamity she has a secret rigor and a pulse like cannon. 1 see her in her old age. not decrepit, but young, and still daring to believe in her powers of endurance and expansion. Seoim< this. 1 sav: All hail. Mother of Nations, Mother of Heroes, with strength still equal to the time; still wise, to entertain and swift to execute the policy whivh (he mind and heart of mankind require at the present hour, and thus only hospitable to the foreigner, and Iruiv a home to the thoughtful and generous, who are born in the soil. So be it! So let it bo!-P>. A. Emerson.

('Hooks for review supplied by Mr A. S. Booker, the B.K. flookshop, Devor street).