NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18591, 16 January 1926, Page 11

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

A VIVACIOUS DIARY. Miss Cleone Knox was a young Irish lady cf good family who, at- the age of twenty, was taken, with her brother and retinue of servants for "the grand tour," in order that she might forget her attachment- to a handsome but penniless neighbour, Mr Ancaster. Miss Cleone was a witty, lively, naughty wench, although she was '"'a virtuous female" —almost the only one in Venice. she said, when she reached there. Amongst her papers one of her descendants found the diary she kept, and he has given it to the world as ''The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion." She was a born diarist, and this sprightly record of travel and society in the years T764-65 is as amusing a thing as one is likely to meet with in a twelvemonth. Adventures odd and a little tragic were common in those days, and M'ss Cleone was such a fascinating creature —longing all the time for her Mr A., and yet exceedingly willing to flirt with any personable gallant—that adventures and excitements would have marked her route in any nge. Her Georgian frankness is sometimes surprising, and often refreshing, and one is so grateful for her lively diary that one reioices that she was united to that killing devil Mr A. —London: Thornton Butterworth.

A REAL LION. Mr Ernest Glanville's "Claw and Fang" was a deservedly popular book, and there is sure to be a welcome for tIM reprint of the story of Ngonyama vLich comes out in a cheap edition a? "The Yellow-Maned Lion." It is a better biography of an animal than attractive but unsound studies by such writers as Mr Seton Thompson, because it is quite free from sentiment, and there is no anthropomorphism in the study of this beast. Generally the animal of fiction either dies a heroic death or lives happily ever afterward. Ngonyama does neither—he degenerates and becomes a mere pest -whom one is glad to see killed. There are many curious lights thrown on the mental processes of the natives of the veld. —London: Jonathan Cape. Through Whitcombe and Tombs.

EUGENE O'NEILL. Three more of Eugene O'Neill's plays hare appeared in one volume —"All God's Children Got Wings," that fin© and effective study of the relations between whites and negroes in New York; "Desire Under the Elms," a gruesome story of New England in. 1850; and "Welded," a bitter episode in the lives of two thoroughly neurotic artists. Mr O'Neill revels, and usually with success, in what is painful and brutal, but in "Desire Under the Elms" he almost goes beyond what even the toughest of his public can easily bear. And yet the ghastly story may well be true, for in Now England 75 years ago _ there* were small communities half insane through immorality, religion, and savagery all mingled together. London: Jonathan Cape. Through Whitcombe and Tombs, Ltd. NOVELS. "The Shining River" is a tale of South Africa in the early 'eighties, by P. Carey Slater. The setting is in the country through which the Keiskama River flows, and picturesque gjimpses are given oF.iloof and veld., Extremely interesting also are the occasional sidelights on Kaffir life and customs. The author has certainly a rare knowledge of the country and its peoples, while the story he. tells is a straight-out narrative, free from any attempt at fine writing. There are not many novels of which so much can be said. (Longmans: London.)

"A. Slim Outline," by Amy J. Baker, could, advantageously, have been slimmer in volume. It is a woman's novel, full of, fashion's decrees, family histories, and feminine fancies in love and gossip., Christine Strange, prepossessing. but twenty-eight, is the head of a big dressmaking establishment, with a clientele including the leaders of London society. Until Captain Wallace arrives she ablv handles difficult situations with temperamental ladies and wayward workers, and then her faculty for deciding things leaves-her. Later, on a holiday in Italy, she_ meets the Ducca Enrico Ilorio, a Sicilian, anjd no laggard in love-making, and the reader requires courage who follows her fortunes from this stag© to the ultimate decision. (John Long, Ltd.: London.) These verses should have been read at the Dominion Conference of B.P.C.A, Societies held last week in Duriedin. They were contributed by the American, Edwin Markham, to a recent issue of the "Ladies' Home Journal": Early, while the east iB pale. The trapper is out on the frozen trail; Cruel traps are on his back, , Snares to line the woodland'track; Day by day he links the chain Of these grim machines of pain, In whose merciless iron jaw 3 'Little fur folk die, because Men muat high on Fortune ride, Women have an hour of pride. Squirrel, ermine, sable, mole, Out for food from cliff and hole; Huskrat, silver fox and mink At the stream for evening drink— All are tempted to this hell That some bank acoount may swell. Ladies, do you think of this — Up where tempests howl and hiss, where the folk of hill and cave Scream with no one there to save? Do you see them crunched and lone, Steel teeth biting into bone? Ladies, did you ever see An otter gnawing to gert free?' Gnawing what? His fettered leg, For he has no friend to beg. (Do you see that tortured shape Gnaw his leg off to escape? Have you seen these creatures die While the bieeding hours go by— These poor mothers in the wood Sobbed of joy and motherhood? Do you, when at night you ikneel. See them in their traps of steel— Sot alone by pain aoourst, But by hunger and by thirst? Do you hear their dying cries "When tha crows pick out their eyes? Yes, sometimes in dreams you hear Yells of agony and fear From the snare of lion teeth, With that panting thing beneath. For all night, where storms are whirled, Groans are curdling the white worldGroans of mothers dying bo, Groana of little ones that go Homeless, hungiy in the snow. Ladies, are the furs you wear Worth the hell of this despair?

Ito be English. Here are many old friends and opponents. Here once more "The Absolute explains," and here, by implication at least, is that masquerading ligment, the Immanent Will. Here is that masterfully cruel touch .which can make of fox-hunting "Lady Vi" not merely a pretty shell, but a pretty disguise of the devil, when her nappy simplicity .finds delight in the torture of the hunted fox. But here, too, is the Mellstock Quire, still alive and lovable after all these years, and active in a ballad which puts them on a level with all those other legendary sinners whose facep have been divinely saved in spite of their own consciousness of wickedness. And throughout the book, what a rich vein there i 3 of the man who suggests, as his modest memorial, that he "used to notice such things" 1