NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17062, 5 February 1921, Page 10

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

OA&ADIAN TRAILS. .'• A right and graceful addition to the Wayfarer's Library is "Open Trails," by Emily Ferguson, who is a sort of lesser Elizabeth, taken out of the .German Garden and transplanted "out to Ottawa," -amongst Canadian steadß, or by Wabanran Lake. She tells lis about the roads and the villages, about young people on their "patch of clearing," about "some Ontario ways,"' or the ways of the weather. Often there are poetical passages, such as the description of the "Wheat fairy," and ; her ogre enemy, "Hangman Hail," or the account of Canadian wild-flowers, sunflowers, red lilies, lupins, yarrow, mint with a blossom almost as large as a tea-c«rp. bluebell, and wild parsnip. "Where, the roots of a tree have kicked off their brown earthy blanket, I find a yellow lady's slipper. This orchid is the emblem of the State of Minnesota. I do not pluck it, because it is a rare flower.; l)esides, I have' thought for a long time that the plant blooms simply to provide foot-wear for the wheat fairy." Clever sentences attract one ; all the more for their out-door tang. "People axe oartbts; plant them too close together and you get.nothing but greens." "I rather like men who babble and boast about their work. It is a way the birds have." "The town is « verjy good place for an occasional roost, but it is better far to build one's nest in:the country." And if "Open Trails" may lead up to many literary references as well as the out-door thoughts, that also is highly appropri-j ate to its theme. "What statistician can tell the number of men who haye followed to India, because of the,writ-j ings of Kipling, to- Alaska v because of Jack London,- to America by reason of Fenimo're■< Oooper, "Washington and Bret HarteP" "People do. not emigrate because they read Blue Books. Comparatively few either see or read Ibem. Men.are caught and lured by eolouT, atmtosphere, the hidden, the desire for the new, the ache for adventure, the something behind the hills." (London and Toronto: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd.) "COPPEUTOP" AGAIN. "Copperlop Cruiftes" is the title given by Harold Gaze .to more adventures of his "Australian lassie with more than a wee drop of Highland blood and freckle-dust in her veins., and a glorious heritage of copper tresses," known now in. many nurseries by her nickname of "Coppertop." The queer irnft in which she and her friends set .sail kindly rose up out of the sand in lesponse to their wishes for a nirate sbip;-<a nice trim .little sloop with a tawnv A sail:-' a submarine, and a seaplane. Bill Brine, the smuggler, remarked "She be sort of queer misrity "•' beat, wid a little bit o' everything in, like an' Irish stoo." The children sailed in the boat, and flew up in the nir, arid sank down to the bottom of die sea, as pleased them best. They visited Queen Cinder Ella, and Queen Sheba, and the Witch of the Goodwins, and got mixed up with the Lemur People, and had so many wild adventures that even strong-minded chilren, who follow them to the very last page, will probably be ghid when "Wake up,

Kid," interrupts the heroine as she is going down headlong into the boiling stew and reveals that the* whole business was but a dream. The illustrations, by the author, are delightfully fantastic things. (Melbourne: The Melbourne Publishing Company.) AN AMERICAN STORY. Mr Charley, in "Aliee-for-Short," wrote an affecting story about a Cicely Smith who lived in a stuffy semi-de-tached villa on some land that was ripe for building and nobody built any more_ villas—"and she had a stuffy mother, and a stuffy aunt, and there were scarlet gerJSViiums and dandelions in the front garden. And—oh, my gracious me —how 6tuffy it all was." Now aiiss Olive Higgins Pronty, in "The Star, in the Window," places ner American heroine in much the same depressing circumstances. She has an invalid mother and a dictatorial aunt to control hqr ways, and at twenty-five has never taken a walk without first receiving permission, or held an opinion without meekly giving, in if her elders opposed it.. The story tells how this secluded being emancipated herself, and how she fared in Boston, after her years in a small New England town. Then how she desperately marred, in order to secure some independence as "a married woman," when, the tenacious relatives called her back to her duties again. It is quite an adventurous plot, worked out in a simple undramatic stvle. (London: W. Collins, Sons, and Co., Ltd.).