NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 73, 27 March 1909, Page 13

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

FICTION. "The Prime Minister." By Orme Agnus, author of " Sarah Tuldon," "Jan Oxber," "Love in Our Village," etc. Illustrated, London : Ward, Lock, a-nd Co., Ltd. (Gordon and Gotch.) It is a real drawback to an author who has gained distinction in one special line, that there seems to be a tacit understanding that he shall not depart from it. Ifc is a restriction under which, in time, he will certainly chafe ; but in the end he usually finds his public too strong for him. Conscious that he can,not surpass, or it may be even equal his earlier work, he may kill his central figure, or banish him finally from the field, but all in vain. The public had Sherlock Holmes brought back from the grave, and Captain Kettle, minus a« leg, was torn from the retirement of his farm and private chapel to resume his old life of wild adventure in lands remote. It may be that Mr. Orme Agnus, after taking supreme rank as a j writer of village idylls, is a little weary of the limits that have hitherto confined his powers. It would not be an easy thing to construct many characters to compare with Jan Oxber or Sarah Tulden; and any special line, however admirably wrought out, is Hatiie to weary in time. In "The Prime Minister" we have our author in quite a new field so far as he is concerned, though the Prime Minister with a compromising mystery in his life has been the theme of at least two recent novels. In this case the secret is a murder, and the story at once suggests comparisons with Loring's strong work, " The Forefront of the Batt3e," with which, in all essential points of treatment, it is in strong contrast. What the verdict of the public may be, remains to be seen ; but we feel that Mr. Agnus is not so much at home in his new line of work and that the result does not bear comparison with his earlier efforts. Ingeniously as the figure of Calladen is constructed, it has not the strong vitality and fidelity to life of Jan Oxber, to say nothing of a host of minor characters in the earlier books — it fails to convince. Calladen in early life has married and deserted a good woman who was his inferior in education, culture, and social standing. He changes his name, conceals lus iden tity, and rises to the highest station. It 15 a time of national crisis ; he holds the full confidence of the nation, and he believes, as the country would also believe, that his removal from office would be a great 1 disaster. His daughter, whom he has never seen, a beautiful and high-prin-cipled girl, has married a tommercial traveller who discovers the secret, which he keeps to himself. He gains an interview with his father-in-law — just betrothed to a lady of rank — and makes proposals to him. Not as-a'vulgar blackmailer, by any means, but he has ambitions both for himself and his wife. He wants to enter politico, and asks that the wealthy Calladen should allow his unacknowledged daughter a reasonable annuity, in which case he would keep the secret sacred. The Prime Minister makes various promises, arranges an interview and in the meantime deliberately plans the murder of the man by poison. He carries out the plan and conceals the body. Various dramatic developments follow, in which he and his affianced wife are brought into contact both with his wife and daughter. Here, however, is where Agnus and Loring diverge. Loring's criminal suffers lifelong remorse, makes confession and all possible restitution, but is not spared the slightest fraction of the penalty of his illdoing, which, though murder in intention, was not absolutely such in fact. Calladen, on the other hand, justifies himself on the specious plea that he has acted from no personal or selfisn motive, but in the higher interest of the State. He suffers, it is true, but it is from the apprehension of discovery ; his guilt is never detected, he never confesses, save to the woman who loves him and thenceforth shares his secret, and who, after the death of the wife of his youth, marries him. The widowed daughter in the end marries the one other person who knows the truth — a journalist who has followed certain clues only too well, but whose devotion to the politician seals his lips also. The reader's credulity is necessarily strained, and never more than in the scene where the revelation of the dastardly crime is made to a noble woman. Her ideals are not shattered by any means ; she accepts the plea of the offender, and becomes ~ (as does also the jourpalist) accessory after the fact. On the whole, we greatly prefer the treatment by Loring, whose book strikes us as the truer to life*, and on a much higher ethical plane. Orme Agnus has followed at a distance the example of Lyfcton in "Eugene Aram," where the readers' sympaUiies are captured as far as possible for a cultivated and refined criminal who slays a vulgar person and defends himself with the universal plea — he has done evil " that good may come." Mr. Agnus may yet strike out some happier and more congenial line : if he does not, we would prefer that he should revisit Barleigh, if not make it his permanent abode. "Workers in Darkness." By J. B. Harris Burland, author of "The Financier," etc. London : Greening and Co., Limited. (Gordon and Gotch). Mr. Burland's specialty is the romance with "thrills," and'some three or four novels have shown him to be a master of the craft. .Remote though his incidents may be from the actualities of life, he retains a firm hold of the reader by his vivid imaginative quality, his succession of pictures of adventure and hairbreadth escapes, and what is usually lacking from the sensational novel, a fine skill in delineation of character. The interest of the present story centres upon one Sir John Lodrix, a criminologist, who has written a book on his fad, that a cei'tarrf curve in the frontal bone foredooms a man to be a criminal. He adopts an infant with this pecularity — the son of a forger, by the way, and brings him up in cold-blooded fashion as an experiment. An unexpected de- 1 velopmeiit occurs when his own daughter and the adopted son make a runaway match. Sir John, however, is the chief j criminal in the book. He is the head i of a kind of "Mafia," and has a good j many mortal murders on his crown. The society itself is a little unconvincing; it seems to have no definite object ; its members are all working in the dark obeying implicitly the commands of unknown superiors, they have undermined London with many subteranean passageways, and when the police are on their track they blow up great parts of the city with high explosives. Every detail is controlled by Sir John, who is known to one member only, the next in command. Such a tale affords opportunity for lively happenings, of which there is no lack, till Nemesis, slow-footed as ever, overtakes the , inventor of "The Lodrix curve" in characteristic fashion. Tho reader is at liberty to judge whether or not the experiment establishes or supports the theory. MISCELLANEOUS. "Ballads about Business and Backblock Life." By Hamilton Thompson. Duoedin : Daily .Times and Witness Company. When a writer says, "No pretence is I made that these verses possess much I literary value, nor that, except in a spry '

few cases, could they be called poetry," he sufficiently defines his position. T"ha reader will probably endorse this vi«w, and will not institute comparisons with Shakespeare, Milton, or Tennyson. It is suggested that they "possess sufficient claim to be humorously descrip tive of the phases of N«w Zealand lire they are intended to depict," and they justify the claim. Many of them havo already appeared in print in various serials, and we think they are for the most part worth reprinting in cheap and handy form. The eleven business ballads in an Anglo-German dialect like that of the "Breitmann Ballads," contain about the best, as well as the most humorous, work in the book. The ballads of the Dredgeman, the Rolling Stone, the Man who Humps his Drum, and others of the backblocks, are breezy, free-and-easy, and genial in .tone, and there is a nature-note in "The Wind in. the Tussocks" and in "Clematis" l : — Beacons erected by Nature's hand over seas. of deepest green. Clusters of stars of purest white studded in skies terrene, Lighting the bush for the passer-by— Who sees not your beauty is dull of eye. The "vignettes" descriptive of cities ; are somewhat poor and prosaic. If Mr. Thompson may not take rank among the poets of New Zealand — and ho does not claim to do so— he may at least supply a few verses for the future anthologist. "Longdill's Solution of the Social Problem." By C. P. W. Longdill, author of various pamphlets and articles on economic and social problems. Price one shilling. Auckland : Wilson and Horton. Mr. Longdill is familiar to all newspaper readers as an industrious writer on economic problems. In a brief preface he states that when he "was quite a young man he became possessed with a presentiment that he was bom to solve the Social Problem," and accordingly has read and thought much on the subject. He can not afford the cost of dealing with his theme as fully as he could ' wish, but in this pamphlet of twenty pages has outlined "an economic philosophy which, if pot into practice exactly as I would wish to see it, and not' perverted or altered, would undoubtedly add immensely to the general sum>of human happiness." In the outset he makes a strong point of the defective financial system of a productive country like ours, which, "after already borrowing for public and private use over -one hundred millions of money, can not yet support in reasonable comfort a million people without sfciil requiring to go, year after year, to London begging for a loan of a million or so." His scheme, he hoids, would make borrowing unnecessary. He does not believe in the Socialist remedy of the confisca- . tion of all industries and means of production by the State. A State bank, with inconvertible currency — a popular panacea — he characterises as "a mad idea." "The only possible practical solution of the social problem is to be obtained through the nationalisation of the land through the medium of a State bank, the finances of which would be controlled and operated for the benefit of all." For an account of the manner in which the author thinks this scheme could be carried out, we qan only refer the reader to the pamphlet, which goes over a wide extent of ground. Students of social economy may think the scheme one which will not be practicable in our century, but they will not grudge the shilling, for the book contains much matter for thought. "Vital Economy : or How to Conserve your Strength." By John H. Clarke, M.D., London: T. Fisher Unwin. A shilling handbook, or two shillings in cloth binding. The author, who has "passed the age-limit" of forty "by a respectable margin/ and is a physician of experience, propounds his "new science" of Vital Economics, and gives much excellent advice. He runs a tilt, as he says, against catchwords, and is refreshingly free- at times in his criticism of professional brethren. "Cleanliness," "fresh-air," "exercise" — these are some of the catchwords which, he thinks, have ceased to represent vital truths and have been reduced to mechanical rules which are superstitiously fol- x lowed. He tells of helpless infants whose nerves are continually being shocked and their vitality lowered by cold bathing, of those in prostrating illness so diligently and persistently washed that they succumb to the treatment; he says that the external layer of the skin forms a self-cleansing device which such treatment as the Turkish bath removes, and that the overwashed and overscrubbed subject is really dirtier than his neighbour because in his case the dirt is not merely superficial' but penetrates beyond the reach of his- ablutious. Further, he condemns alkaline detergents as destroying the natural lubricating material. Such treatment "leaves the organism imperfectly insulated and much more sensitive to atmospheric changes than if it were present in normal amount." He tells a gruesome story of a healthy man who lost his life through taking an unaccustomed bath — well, this sad case is reported at second-hand and does not seem convincing. In like unconventional fashion does ' he deal with the exercise and fresh-air manias. It must not be inferred that the doctor would have people go dirty or deprive themselves of freshair and exercise, but he holds that these things are not as some seem to think possessed of any occult or magic influence; they have their proportional place in any scheme of vital ecoflpmy. His chapter on alcoholic beverages is on very familiar lines> ; but he is if anything, more severe on tea and coffee ; in fact his tea chapter reads like a temperance tract with "tea" substituted for "alcohol." Coffee, he says, is "move of a food than tea." Beverages are not taken as fodds, and no physiologist ever takes their food-value into consideration, as it is negligible in any case. He has some excellent hints about visiting the sick. Altogether, the book is one that may be read with decided profit; it is tersely expressed and s full of homely practical wisdom, the occasional personal whims giving a spice to tho whole. His caution against officious advisers is good : — "I advise them never to succumb until they have resolutely shut out their friends' pleadings and used their own judgment. If people would only use the light of their own judgment and intuition they would be right ninety-nine times out of a hundred, whereas if they listen to people who are worshippers of one or the other catch-phrases of the day they will be just as often wrong." A caution which may be jndiciously applied even to the author's own book. We have received No. 2 (March) of The Watersider, a monthly "store magazine, compiled by the employees and published monthly by Munro's stores, Westport and N-gakawau," and printed by Munson and Sons, of the same town. It is a miscellany, following on the lines of Hubbard's "Philistine," even in such details as Mr. Hubbard's typographical eccentricities. He is largely quoted, as is also Sheldon — not the redoubtable Kausas parson, but A. F., of Illinois — and others of the modern Gath and Askelon. It contains, therefore, some good advice, besides various "great truths" which the judicious reader will not swallow whole. But, as the essence of a lady's letter is said to be in the postscript, the soul of the Watorsidei* may be found in "an open letter to the Hon. J. Millar," signed "V. F. Munro," and occupying eight pages, printed on conspicuous pink paper. We shall not at- . tempt to enter into details, but may say \£hat it constitutes ap indictment cf_ a

serious kind agauisfc the Westport Harbour Board and incidentally against the Government — an indictment that the Administration can scarcely afford to ignore.