LITERARY.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 145, 19 June 1915, Page 14

LITERARY.

"Tlip -rvsterv of 'Knid ]-<llair_,'* by David Whitelav'v (lloddcr and Stougllton) is the story of a girl of good family, who is thrown upon her own resources to si niggle for a livelihood. iSbe takes to the .stage, and there becomes involved in a tragedy arising from the mysterious death of'a filar BOtrcs- with whom sha has boon associated as understudy. Her subsequent life in Paris and Scotland develops new phases of tho plot. It is .iltogether an interesting and well-told story. Mr. TI. 0. Wells has written his views on the avoidant I' war in the future 111 a pamphlet called "The Peace of tho World," which the "Daily Chronicle" publishes ut sixpence. A world conference is the first step after tho war; the Stale control of armament manufacture should follow, with an alliance of the Towers pledged to make war upon and destroy and replace tho fiovernment of iinv Male that beenme nggTossive in its militarism. "This alliance will be in edict a world congTess perpetually restraining aggressive secession."

Among I hem the Rothschilds have written enough hooks to lill a good-sized shelf. The new Peer has issued several > ptuoiis volumes on birds and beasts, and his cousin, Mr. .1. A. dc Rothschild, i- the author of "Shakespeare and His Day." The best history of the French postal service is by Baron Arthur de Rothschild, and Baron .lames, the late head of ihe Paris branch, wrote a number of bibliographical works. The most prolific writer of the family, however, is Dr. Henri de Rothschild, who made his debut in literature with some interesting "Notes sur I'Angleterre," and followed this up with four other travel !„„,--. lie is also responsible for some medical treatises nnd for some plays, two ~f which have been seen in L/ondon.

The "doyen" ol" Kdinburgh's bookseller,, Mr. James Thin, who has just died at the great age of ninety- two. was a connecting Link with the palmy days nf bookselling and publishing in Kdmlitir_li. Scott, ban bei-n dead only lour Tears when Mr. Thin. 111 1 s.-lii, bejan his carer as a bookseller; and dining his life he had made the acquaintance of many literary celebrities. from De iiiiineey down to I'.-icrt Louis Slovensun. Mr. Thin was a man ol aide read ing. and made liymnolo_y a special study. His ei.lloctii.n ~!' hymn books, ancient and modern. numb.-icd sonic' ■1. .",00 volumes.

A .hot-ford, which is now serving as a military hospital, was one of the first residences north of the Tweed to be lit hv gas: nnd Sir Walter Scott was as pleased with the installation as a child with a new toy. "Mv gas establishment is in great splendour." he wrote to Dan Terry in March. Isjij, "and working very easily and very cheaply. ... in our new mansion we should have Ixen ruined with spermaceti oil and wax candles, yet had not one-tenth of the light; besides, we are entirely freed from the great plague of cleaning lanij.s. «ite" I-ockbarl. however, dct.'wtcl the innovation, and declares that "sir Walter's health wa- damaged in his latter .vcars in consequence ot his habitually working at night under the burning glare of a broad -tar ~f gas, vvhi,!i hung, as it were, ia the air, immediately over his writing tabic"

The library of tho Colonial Ofliee. from the charge of which Mr. Ohewloß Atehley has just resigned after a long period of service, is one of the best selected, but by no means the largest of Ihe ''administrative libraries" of I-ondon, since against lis L"3,000 volumes the I"nreign Ofli.c can set. 7-.000 and the War Uflicc -0.000 volumes, the general public knows little about these libraries, since they are intended almost exclusively for the use of the Mini-ter_ and officials of the departments to which they belong.

Other great "special libraries" of which even bookish men may be ignorant, include those of the Bank of Kngland [.1.1100 vols.), the Society of Antiquaries | 111.001) vnl-.1. the Royal Academy nf Arts I HUH"! vols. I, "and too ibd.i-mitlis Company'.s Library ..f "economics i 1(1.000 v„N.i. the Inner Temple Library (lill.OOn vols.), and the Lincoln's Inn Library 1.'J.000 vols.!.

"The Seventh I'o-l Card." by Flowerdew (Crecning's Kmpire Library) is a capital detective (.lory, which wiiil enthral lovers nf that form of fiction. Malf-n-do7.cn of the most important automobile clubs and associations in London receive a typewritten letter headed "The League of' Personal Safety." This commtinicalinii. which contains neither signature nor address, stales that: "Whereas nn increasing disregard was being shown by motorists generally for the lives and "safety of those who use the public roads, whilst no efTect ive steps were being taken in restrain them by law, mainly "localise the laws of the country were drafted and carried oui by the motoring classes in their own interests."' the League nad .eon formed to remedy this injustice and exact a proper penalty from the driver of any description of automobile who took human life. No notice was taken of '.'his warning until one motorist afler another who had the misfortune to kill anyone was found murdered, after first receiving warning by moans of a postcard. It is in tracking down the perpetrators of lliese crimes that the novelist displays bis ingenuity. Tbe (wo chief investigators tire two successful writers of detective stories, representing tho two soxos in character and human emotions.

War topics ocvniipv a load ing placjo in "Life" for .Line. Dr. \V. 11. Pitehott devotes tho second of his live special articles tn Wellington and the Waterloo campaign. W. A. Somoivot, reviews tlie contents nf the second volume of

"The Times History of the War." and an Anglo-Australian journalist, who has had a wide experience of newspaper work abroad, contributes an article on

"Fleet Street in War Time." In the course of this paper be dissipate. Ihe common delusion that a war is profitiil.le to a newspaper. He shows that a big war such as this is disastrous to advertising, and that the cost of paper goes up. The increased circulation in the best of cases produces very litllo extra profit, while in some cases it means an actual loss, the margin he twoen the cost of Ihe while paper and the not price realised from the sale of the newspaper being sometimes on the wrong fide. (In the outbreak of the present war some London newspapers, alarmed at the loss of adverlising and the necessary increase in the cost ~f war correspondence and telegrams, dismissed nearly ail their stad, others cut down salaries to one-half or one-third of what the men had previously been receiving. Some papers, however, by launching out into well-eonsidored expenditure for special war matter, had permanently improved thoir position in the world of journali_m.

_. well-knowD. author, according to a story related at the Boston Authors' Club, has adapted the rule that all applicants for his autograph must lirst furnish satisfactory proof that they have read his books. A young girl recently wrote to the novelist for his autograph. By return of post came a single typewritten line: —

"Have you read my last book?" To which the young lady replied; "1 sincerely hope not." The autogra/pk came promptly.

The April numiber of "Chart and Compass,"' the organ of the British anil Foreign Sailors' Society, contains war pictures and items of news. L'ndor the heading "The Imperial Outlook,'' murjh space is given to New Zealand, and more especially to the essay competition as it affect- this Dominion. After naming the prize-TV—more, the writer states that the New Zealand essays showed "groat patriotism, considoraiblo reading, and keen appreciation of Britain's dependence upon her sailors in the past."

"Bambi," a novel by Marjorie Benton Cooke, was included in tho best six sellers in the United States in March last It is a brightly written story. Bambi, the daughter of a professor, takes in hand an absent-minded genius named Jarvis, whom she succeeds in hustling • into marriage without the bridegroom appreciating just what is happening. Then Bambi docs her best to make something of her idealistic and unpractical husband, and discovers that she po-Scsßes a considerable amount of literary ability herself, which is a bettor asset in'the world's market than her husband's uncertain talents. She is a bright and witty personality, who charms Die reader. Tlie publishers are Doublodav, Pago, and Co., Garden City, -New York.

Mr. Pinna, who has written an admirable full-length life of Walt Whitman, which has won the honour of translation in a recent 'short study of Whitman's poetry, points out how inevitable was the force that drove Whitman to self-ex-pression. "Not, be it understood, in the merely egotistical desire to 'celebrate himself.' Behind that famous phrase of his lies all his passionate devotion to the common average humanity out ol' wliich every pcs on i.s wrought. \\ hat ho assumes of himself ]~, requires you in your turn to a.-.-ume. iie dial leii'-'cs you tn retnrt ill terms of your own manhood nnd womanhood more honourable yet. He regarded this as the only befitting modern attitude; and (uippose.l that America, the new world. could only be sung in chants resounding with the glory of ordinary humanity — its yet unexplored scope, its vista, its immortal roach and destine.''

Mr. Horace Hart, who has just retired from the Oxford I'niversity Press. .of which he has had control for thirty years, was responsible for bringing about uniformity in the spelling of disputed words in the books' issue. Iby tbe I'niversity Press. To this end ho compiled a booklet, to which Sir James Murray, the editor ot the great Oxford Dictionary, contributed some characteristic annotations. Sir James was not always able to agree with the style of the Cniversitv I*ress, and one of his notca to the instruction always In print "Shakespeare" pointed out that it was unfortunate that the I'niversity Press should ho committed to this spelling, as "Shaksperc is sclu.larlv."

In another note to Mr. Hart's booklet, Sir James wrote: "I protest strongly against the unseholarly habit of omit ting 'o' before 'merit' in abridgement, acknowledgement, judgement, lodgement, which is a_ainst all analogy, etymology, and orthoepy, sinc<> elsewhere 'g' is hard in _-_lish when not followed by 'c* or 'i.' I think the University Press ought to set a scholarly example, instead of following the ignorant to do ill, for the sake of saving four 'e's.' The word 'judgement' has been spelt in tho Revised Version correctly—evidently in fear of divine judgement.'"

THE FELLOWSHIP OF SILENCE. Matmillan ami Co.. London. 4/0 not. "ibis book," we are told by the editor. Cyril Heph.-r, "is an echo of the New Zealand Mission of Help, an.l a distant result of it. "If," he continue*, "it attains tho editor's desire, it will hold something, at least, of the spirit that swept lis along in that memorable mission. Like the rest of my brother missioners, I look hack upon that Mission a s the exporionco of a lifetime, and in these pages try to toll, as plainly as 1 can. of ono incident in that experience. to mc the greatest that Now Zealand had to give. There 1 found in a little church of my own comnnmion an old and very simple thing, a spiritual practice, a method of prayer, which, simple as it was, or perhaps because it was sn simple. was tit the time so vivid an experience, and has since proved so rich in its aft or f roils, and wide in its appeal in or hi r lands, and in other conditions, that after long and sound deliberate waiting T desire to gain for it a yet wider acceptance."

The practice to which tho editor refers is that of Silent Meetings f or Spiritual Communion. Mr. Ilepbcr, in the course of -is work, as a member of the Mission, visited Ilaveloek. a small town near Napier, and there ho found that the Vicar nf the Anglican Church, having been induced to grant the use nf the church vestry tn a small community of Quakers, residing in the district, had. with .members of his family. Won induced to join them in their worship. The outcome nf this association was a conviction of tho value of Silence as a spiritual agency. The services wore transferred from the vestry to tho church, and it was hero that Air. Hephcr obtained a personal oxperionoo of thoir efficacy. He says that tho aspect of tho Silence which impressed him most powerfully at tho time, and which does so still, after four years' experience.

" was the discovery of a direct and powerful way in which the work of prayer was ma-do markedly easier than I had found it to ho in isolation. The blending of silence with fellowship seems to create an atmosphere in which tho sense of the spiritual in man is sot free.''

The subject is elaborated in several essays which have boon contributed by members of the Anglican Mission and by Quakers -who were associated with the movement at Havolock. "The Powerof Silence for Healing and Conversion " is dealt with by J. C. Fitzgerald, C.R., who qiiotos instances of healing by suggestion at a distance. -Mr. L. V. Hodgkin. a member of tho Society of Friends, contends that silence possesses a distinctive colour, and that its potency for spiritual ends is affected by this condition. Tlie subject is an interesting one. and this book possesses an added attraction for New Zealand, readers from the fact that the ex-porienoes with which ii deals were stimulated by a religious association of Anglicans and Quakers in a New Zealand village.