NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 11876, 25 April 1904, Page 8

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

♦ii "The Truthful Liar," hy Mrs D. G. Ritchie, just misses being rather a notable book. There is much perverse cleverness diffused through the volume, and many lively sayings are only spoilt by a certain over-sourness for the occasion. The heroine is a, woman of thirty, whose chief complaint seems that she is cond. jived for a time to live a quiet and single life in tho country. Otherwise no reason appeals for the amount of feminine bitterness her speech reveals. There is a sillj', but attractive and eweet-natured, mother, in tho story, and a surpassingly excellent Dean, with a model daughter. Also a model young man, and a vaguely bad one, who dismisses liimself finally by a pistol-shot. After conscientious reading, the reviewer feels unable to decide to which of the various conversationalists is applied the title epithet, "the truthful liar." (London: Methuen's Colonial Library. Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs.) Tlie Biblical novel, having its scene in Nazareth or Jerusalem, and introducing romance incidents amongst gleanings from the gospels, now makes frequent appearance. "Mary of 'Magdala," by Edgar Saltus, is no very favourable specimen of the type. Either "from the literary or the religious point of view, there is much that requires forgiveness in a writer who can expand the parable of the two dehtors with tlie remarks that "Beulah suppressed a. giggle," while Judas "sat bolt upright, Fumbling Mary with his' violet eyes." (London: Greening's Colonial Library. Australia: Gordon and Gotch, 2s 6d.) Part IX. of the "Great Masters," the series of photogravure reproductions of famous paintings which is being issued by Mr William Heinemann, once more shows the value of tlie series. This particular number contains, for instance, "The Artist in his Studio," by Vermeer" Deft, & quaint conception, and "St. Ursula's Dream," by Carpaccio, which gives a good idea of a girl's room at the end of the fifteenth century. The absence of cumbering nick-nacks is a reproach to modern furnishers. There is also Velasquez's charming portrait of the little son of Philip IV. of Spain, mounted on a fat pony, which emulates the prancings of the conventional war horse, and a curious group portrait of the Governors of the Hospital for Poor Children in Haarlem, painted in 1663. Tlie workmanship of the photogravures is admirable, and Sir Martin Conway's illuminating notes add greatly to the "virtue of the pictures. (London: Wm. Heinemann, 55.) Tlie fact that it is an anonymous work rescues "The Jewel Sowers" from the danger of disappointing its readers. The scene of the story is in the planet Lucifram, to which we are introduced in the first chapter as a place where "the people, each and all, walked upside down. Th*e trees wero upside down, the houses, the churches with their steeples, the palaces, the oceans, rivers, lakes, mountains, animals and fishes, each and all, reversed our own conception of mundane propriety." Tlie anonymous writer has not the ability of H. G. Wells or Jules Verne to sustain the impression conveyed in this introduction, and that is about all that can he said of the book. (London: Greening's Colonial Library. Christchurch: Gordon and Gotch, 2s 6d.) "In Low Water,"- by Nat Gould, is one of this author's characteristic sporting novels. In fact it has an even more " horsey " flavour than many of his other works, for most of the principal characters are members of a circus, the benevolent proprietor of which has adopted the hero. The story opens in England, hut the scene is soon transferred to Australia, where the circus .proprietor finds time and opportunity to race one or two horses. It is in his description of the racing scenes that. Mr Gould is at his best. In the end Fortune smiles oh tho hero, who is discovered to he the son of a successful captain in the mercantile marine. Prosperity and happiness reward his friends, the villain meeting with poetic justice by being killed in a steeplechase, in which the winner is ridden by tlie hero. (London: R. A. Everett and Co. Christchurch: Fountain Barber. 2s 6d and 3e6d.) "Stella Fregelius," differs from the majority of Mr H. Rider Haggard's books in that it is not exciting. Morris Monk, a young inventor of highly nervous temperament, becomes engaged to his wealthy and charming cousin. Subsequently he rescues from the sea and falls in love with the heroine of the story, Stella Fregelius, a dreamer and a mystic, who believes spiritual existence after death to be the only real life. On discovering their love, they determine never to see each other again on earth, but they exact a kind of spiritual marriage which is to bind them after death. Soon afterwards Stella Fregelius dies, and Morris confesses all to his cousin, who determines to go on with the engagement. They are happily married, but his mind still broods upon his other spiritual attachment. The feeling is intensified by the discovery of Stella's diary, in which he read* how once, after long spiritual effort, she summoned her departed sister to her side, but refrained from ever doing so again, lest the spiritual effort ehould exact too much from her corporeal infirmity. Ho determines, if it is possible, to see Stella in tho same way, and after long prayer and fasting and sleepless brooding, he succeeds. The sceptical reader will explain that he goes out of his mind, and this is where the story is weakest. The author admits, in the. preface, that his tale is inconclusive and without climax, but he explains that it was only written for his own pleasure, and was published afterwards at the suggestion of a friend. (London: Longman's Colonial Library. Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs, 2s 6d and 3s 6d.) "Chambers's Journal" for March is an excellent number. Of topical interest to Canterbury readers is an. article on "How Electrio Trams Work." A S3ries of hitherto unpublished anecdotes by the late Sir George Grove deals in a racy manner with such well-known people as tho great DukeN>f -Wellington. Bishop Wilberforce, Tennyson, Gladstone, and Disraeli, Dean Stanley and Mr Spurgeon. There is an admirable article on radium, and Captain Lewis Golding discourses pleasantly upon some humours of South African battlefields, and there is an absorbing account of a remarkable burglary which created a sensation in London forty years ago. These are only a few of the more solid features of the magazine, and on the side of fiction the serial by William Le Qneux is continued, Louis Becke contributes a characteristic short story, and there are several first-class tales by other authors. .(W. and R. Chambers, London, Id). That curiosity in misogyny, "Lovely Woman," by Mr T. W. JjL Crosland, is now obtainable in a cheap edition. It has achieved all the fame to which it is entitled ss literature by the unsuccessful action for libel brought by its author against a reviewer who copied Mr Crosland's style too closely for that gentleman's taste. As a collection of all the unpleasant and mainly untruthful remarks shout the sex "Lovely Women" is not without interest, but it has no other merit. (London: Grant, Richards; Christchurch: Fountain Barber, Is).) Mary Maim has a great capacity for giv. ing surprises with her writing)*. "Olivia's Summer" seemed hardly by the same hand as "The Patten Experiment," and now "Gron'ma'a Jane* 'is quite a new variety of novel again. The scene of this story is an English country town; the time that 'of pork-pie hats and of crinolines —and in this lralf-dreamy romance account, very long ago it seem.

to be. "Gran'ma** Jane" herself is a charming heroine, moving always with distinct' aidtviduahtv amon_Tst things sordid, poetic, or tragical. There is a triumph of character-drawing, too, in "Gran'ma," who in spite of all her most objecuonable ways, retains a tsluire of our sympathies to the end. This is a humanly interesting, quiettoned, aud very cleverly written book. (London: Methueh's Colonial Library. Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs.; 2s 6d.) BITS FROM NEW BOOKS. "At one time, it is remembered, girls adopted professions only when their parents could not afford to keep them— all too frequently not- even thst-a. It was considered an indignity for a woman to earn her bread. The fact, even, that she made a pudding, washed the tea-thing*, helped to sew her own frock, was not mentioned by the polite." "Gran'ma's Jane," Mary Mann. Tlie only really sound recipe for the S reservation of beauty is—marry and keep ouse, and do both in the sense that your grandmamma did. The woman writer is an offence in the sight of Olympus. As a criminal woman excels. There are certain mean forms of criminality which she has made peculiarly her own Most women are more or less bad I am of opinion that moral aberration is just as common among women as kissing. Tlie trouble about the so-called emancipation of women, the danger and the difficulty of it, he in the circumstance that tends to create what, for want of a better phrase, we may term tlie third sex I wish the third sex no harm, because I know it will find its level. In other words it cannot survive, inasmuch as it is flatly opposed to the laws of the universe. Outside matrimony the only place for a woman is a baby-linen shop. "Lovely Woman," by T. W. H. Crosland Regarding municipal and State fire insurance, a recent issue of the Melbourne "Argus" has the folowing:—"The recent disastrous fire at Aalesund has pretty well exploded municipal insurance in Norway. The Norwegians, like the New Zealanders, are extremely advanced people, and have, therefore a fire insurance depart—ent. That is pleasing as far as it goes, but the Government department has been co successful in obtaining risks in Aalesund that it now finds that it has to pay out no less than, £306,000. The department has not got the money in hand, and it is trying to obtain it by issuing bonds, repayable in from five to seven years, at about 4± per cent, interest; For the same period an extra premium is to be levied on the whole of the property insured in the country to cover the loss. If the same experience should occur in New Zealand, the Government would probably want to borrow in London for fire losses and other purposes. The incident shows the unsoundness of Government and municipal insurance departments, which, when a conflagration occurs, find themselves saddled with an enormous deficit." Life is a queer game of blind man's buff, isn't it; played in a mist on a mountain top, and the players keep dropping over the precipices. Bui nobody heeds, because there are always plenty more, and the game goes on for ever. "Stella Fregelius," by H. Rider Haggard. - Although Nature often recoils from it, .man was made to work, and he who will | not. work calls down upon himself some curse, visible or invisible, as he who works, although the toil seems wasted, wakes up one day to find the arid wilderness, where he wanders, strewn with the manna of blessing. This should be the prayer of all ,of understanding, that whatever else it may please (Heaven to take away, there may be left to them the power and the will to work, through disappointment, through rebuffs, through utter failure even, still. to work. Ibid. Of^ prayers for the dead:—"lf my poor petitions cannot help them who are.above the need of help, .at least they may ahow that they are not. forgotten. Oh 1 that must be the bitter part; to live on full of love and memory, and watch forgetfulness creeping into the hearts of the loved and the remembered. The priests never thought of it, but there lies the real purgatory. Ibid. BITS FROM BOOKS. "Men loathe hearing about a woman's inner life. If she is young and pretty she may hint' at an inner life, but she must be quick and get it over, and not do it again. • A man can, at a pinch, stand comedy, but what his heart craves for is farce." ' v The Truthful Liar," Mrs D. G. Ritchie. "Plain women make friends; they are allowed to haVe friends if they make themselves, useful to them." Ibid.