LITERARY COLUMN. NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS.

Evening Post, Volume LX, Issue 18, 21 July 1900, Page 3 (Supplement)

LITERARY COLUMN. NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS.

"Mirry-Ann," by Norma Loiimer. Methuen's Colonial Library. H. Baillie and. Co., Wellingtons The book before us is a study in Manx character and Manx conditions. The heroine is the disowned child of a village beautj*. and the village squire. Inheriting, as she does, from her father the tendency of his race towards the unrestrained enjoyment of all desires, and from her mother the morbid conscientiousness, the puritanical strictness, and religious intensity of the Methodists, her iife is a continual conflict between love and duty. With natural instincts and acquired tastes that revolt against the ways and thoughts of the people about her, circumstances, "and her sense of duty, compel her to live their life whilst in two different directions opportunities for the life she longs for open,' to her. Her renunciation of tne man she loves, and her betrothal to the fierce village wooer who has lost nis eyesight in her service, bid fair to majte her life one long tragedy. But a naturai development of the plot evades what seems to be the almost inevitable end, and Mirry-Ann is saved from what a wise and motherly friend had described to her as possibly an over-reaching of "God's estimate of human pity and selfsacrifice." The character of Mirry-Ann is finely conceived, and on the whole, Miss Lorimer's study is a good and careful one. And whilst the book is essentially a presentment of the one central character, the persons amongst whom she moves are well drawn, too. There may be a lack of convincing power in the figures of the young Squire and his sister, Mace Christian, but tke village portraits — Ned Gawne, Mirry's lover, John Thomas Costain, and more than one other, are full of strength and truthfulness. There is, perhaps, a tendency to ovcrminuteness of detail manifested throughout, but the fault is one that may be attributed to Miss Lorimer's sex. The book is unmistakably a woman's work, but it is well worth reading as affording an interesting ' study" 5n irace character.' " Baden Powell," by W. Francis Aitken. S. and W. Partridge and Co.,, London. Whitcombe and Tombs, 'Wellington. There is no episode of the South African war that has evoked so much enthusiasm as the gallant defence of Mafeking, and not even "Bobs " himself 'has loomed larger in British eyes than its gallant defender, Major-General Baden Powell, the "8.-P." of the English-speaking world, as well as of intimate friends. People naturally wish to know all about the man who is the hero of the day, and Mr. Aitken has endeavoured, in the little book before us, to give the main facts of his life in a readable and popular form.