FROM AUSTRALIA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 29, 4 February 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

FROM AUSTRALIA.

"Full of wise saws anil modern instances," is Mr. W. Rock's "To-day We Live" (Angus and Robertson), and a very i bright, cheerful and stimulating book for everybody in thes<> depressing times. Here •we have the gay young Australian who is never hopeless or without a happy tlipuglit, who makes his friends delighted to be of use to him, who always linds a way of making money when funds are low, and does any amount of useful wor<c for nothing. Australia is taking her bad times with a light heart, although her criminals seek to discredit her by worse conduct than usual, and 'in sport and adventure, and by regarding, only the hour, without regrets for the past or despair for the future, the people so dear to Mr. Rock make' a sunshine of their own. From the same publishers comes Mr. F. D. Davison's "Forever Morning." What Steele Rudd did for the poorer selector of the Australian bush, Davison | does for the second of wealthier settlers, who are part and parcel of the back country, with few interests outride the sliprails. Station life is by no means monotonous, and its problems call for more than ordinary intelligence and | courage. In this story a widower and jdaughter take as # part of the family an illegitimate waif who 'becomes as a son to the old man and an inspiration to the daughter, for there is -i beauty of [character about Andy, the man of no name, which is unexpected in the general-useful hand on a small estate. Andy is one of the gentlemen of the bush, who has the courage of the gentle and the gentleness of the brave. Doris (who "acts opposite," as film critics say) is one of tlio«se exceptional girls who, after years of city training, turns gratefully to the simplicity of the bush; horses, dogs, cattle, sheep and domestic tasks, are preferable, to her, to the artificialities of town life. The educated Australian girl is welcomed everywhere, and her bush sister, so much less polished, is known for her good-hearteduess, and Mr. Davison "has done much to spread this knowledge in a, natural love story. . i