THE BOOK FELLOW. Written for The Post, by A. G. Stephens.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 83, 8 April 1911, Page 13

THE BOOK FELLOW. Written for The Post, by A. G. Stephens.

(Copyright.— All Rights RoierTad.) TWO STORY-TELLERS. Oliver Onions writes in "Widdershins" (Unwin 2s 6d> an uncommon fine book of stories. Most of tlie motives we remember before ; but the setting is fresh and the handling wonderfully good. The longer stories are le6s well gripped ; but there are several shorter to rank with the best we have in recent English. "Widdershins" means "against the course df the sun," and Onions' themes are taken from the world of the subconscious and supra-ecientifk, denying ''common sense." He misses, perhaps intentionally, the atmosphere of mystery that w© find in P6e or Machen; his model might be Merimee's 'Tenus d'llle," with its miracle terrifying in daylight; he is not haunting, but definitely impressive. The technic of the story called "The Accident," for example, could not be bettered in its style. The idea ie in Bierce and elsewhere, but Onions gives it a new significance. Romarin, a successful painter, aska Maxsden, an unsuccessful painter, to dine with him at a London restaurant they frequented when they were students together. They have not met for forty yeara, and they were at feud ; but Time buries enmity, and Marsden had merit. Romarin sincerely desire to do him a good turn, given the chance. He comes first to the rendezvous, and finds much that is changed in, the old street. Close by the restaurant is a new theatre, whence men are carrying scenery to a tumbril-like cart. And Romarin waJka along waiting and pondering. Then he sees Marsden — Marsden whom he had fought about a girl in that restaurant forty years before, Marsden to whom his old aversion was instinctive. Mareden comes- up shabby, sinister, and at the sound of his voice, Romarin recollects that old aversion. "Well, ray distinguished Academician, my " Marsden's voice, sounded across the group of scene-shifters. . . '"Alf a mo, if you please, guvnor," said another voice. For a moment the painted "wing" shut them off from one another. . .. . Romarin takes Marsden's arm and goes into the restaurant. They sit down. Romarin tries honestly to bury the old grudge, but Marsden will not let him. Everything Marsden says <Jr does grates on Eomarin, reviving his antipathy. Marsden attacks his success, denies it, affirms his own triumph, not in painting but in living, and recites his horrible story. But suddenly Marsden's voice, which had risen, dropped again. He began to shake with interior chuckles. They were old, old chuckles, and they filled Romarin with a hatred hardly to be borne. The sound of the animal's voice had begun it, and his every word, look, movement, gesture, since they had entered tho restaurant, had added to it. And he was now chuckling, chuckling. ■ shaking with chuckles, as if some monstrous tit-bit still remained to be told. Already Romarin had tossed aside his napkin, beckoned to the waiter, and said, "M'sieu dinea with me. . .' "Ho, ho, ho, ho!" came the drunken sounds. "It's a long time since M'sieu dined here with his old friend Romarin ! Do you remember the last time? Do you remember it? Bif, pan! Two smacks across the table, Romarin — oh, you got it in very' well — and then, brrrr ! quick ! Back with the tables — all the fellows round-~Farquharson for me «nd Smith for you, and then to it, Romarin ! . . . And you really don't remember what it was all about? . . ." Romarin had remembered. ■ His face was not the face of the philosophic mastei of Life now. "You said she shouldn't — lixtle Pattie Bines, you know — you said she shouldn't- — " Eomarin half sprang from his chair, and brought his fist down upon the table. "And by Heaven, she didn't! At least that's one thing you haven'v done !" Mareden, too, had risen unsteadily. "Oho. oho? You think that?" A wild thought flashed across Roinarin's brain. "You mean ?" "I mean? . . . Oho, oho ! Yes, I mean .' She did, Romarin . . ." The mirrors, mistily seen through the smoke of half a hundred cigars and cigarettes, the Loves and Shepherdesses on the garish walls, the diners starting up in their places, all iuddenly seemed to swing round in a great half-circle before Romarin's eyes. The next moment, feeling as if he stood on something on which he found it difficult to keep his balance, he had caught up the table-knife with which he had peeled the pear, and had struck at the side of Marsden's neck. * The rounded blade snapped, but he struck as;ain with the broken edge, and left the knife where it entered. The table uptilted almost vertical : over it Marsden's head disappeared ; it was followed by a shower of glass, cigars, artificial flowers, and the tablecloth at which he clutched, and the dirty American cloth of the table top was lett bare. -\ But the edge behindtwhich Marsden's face had disappeared Temained vertical. A group of scene shifters were moving a fiat of scenery from a theatre into a tumbril-like cart. . . . And Romarin knew that, past, present, and future, he had seen it all in an instant, and that Marsden stood behind that painted wing. And he knew, too, that he had only to -n ait f until that flat passed to talfe Marsden's arm and enter the restaurant, and it would be so. A drowning man is said to see all in one unmeasurable inslant of timo; a year-long dream is but, they say, an instantaneous arrangement in the waking of ,the molecules we associate with ideas ; and the past of history and the future of prophecy are folded up in the mystic moment we call the present ... , It would come true. . . . For one moment Romarin stood; the next, he had turned and run for his life. At the corner of the street he collided with a loafer, and only the wall saved them from going down. Feverishly Romarin plunged his hand into his pocket and brought out a handful of silver. He crammed it into the loafer's hand. "Heie — quick — take it!" lie gasped. "There's a man there, by that restaurant door— he's waiting for Mr. Romarin— tell him—tell him— tell him Mr. Romarin's had an accident " And he dashed away, leaving the man looking at the silver in his palm. See now how the same idea is put with a sardonic twist in "0. Henry's" lart book "Whirligigs' (Doubleday, Page; 3s 6d). "Whirligigs" is no less seductive than Henry's previous books, and the stories are well wortli reading in medicinal doses after meals. lii "The Roads we Taice," Shark Dodson and his male Bob Tidball hold up an expte&s train, and have a good chalice of escape with their booty v hen Tidball's horse breaks his lej,. Tidball i.s little concerned; he says DodaonV horso Bolivar -will catty two to safety. Dodson thinks differently ; he meditates. The cheerful Tidball sets him thinking of the chance that has brought him to tWs pass. I ran away from lionie when i was seventeen. It was an accld-ent my coimV in the West. I iras vrnYkm^hng the road with my clothes in a bundle>«ciakin' for New York City. I .had an idea-of

goin' thero and makin' lots of money. I always felfc like I could do it. I cam© j to a place one evening where the roads forked, and I didn't know which fork to take. I studied about it for half an hour, and then I took the left-hand. That night I run into the camp of a Wild West show that was travellin' among the little towns, and I went West with it. I've often wondered it I wouldn't have turned out different if I'd took the dther road." "Oh, I reckon you'd have ended' up about the same," said Bob lidball, cheerfully philosophical. "It ain't the roads wo take ; it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do." Shark Dodson got up and leaned against a tree. "I'd a good deal rather that sorrel of yourn hadn't hurt himself, Bob," he said again, almost pathetically. "Same here," agreed Bob; "he was sure a first-rate kind of crow-bait. But Bolivar, he'll pull \is through all right. Reckon we'd better be movin' on, hadn't we, Shark? I'll bag this boodle agin and we'll lilt the trail for higher timber." Bob Tidball replaced the epoil in the bag, and tied the mouth of it tightly with a cord. When he looked up the most prominent object that he saw was the muzzle -of Shark Dodson's .45 held upon him without a waver. "Stop your funnin'," said Bob, with a grin. "We got to be hittin' the breeze." "Set still," said Shark. "You ain't goin 1 to git no breeze, Bob. I hate to tell you, but there ain't any chance for but one of us. Bolivar, he's plenty tired, and he can't carry double." "We been paxds, me and you, Shark Dodson, for three year,'" said Bob quietly. "We've risked our lives together time and again. I've always give you a square deal, and I thought you was a man. I've heard some queer stories about you shootin' one or two men in a peculiar way, but I never believed 'em, Now if you're just havin' a little fun with me, Shark, put your gun up, and we'll get on Bolivar and vamose. If you mean, to shoot — shoot, you blackhearted son of a tarantula!" Shark Dodson's face bore- a deeply sorrowful look. "You don't know how bad I feei," he sighed, "about that sorrel of yourn breakin' his leg, Bob." The expression on Dodson'c face changed in an instant to one of cold ferocity mingled with inexorable cupidity The soul of the man showed itself for a moment like an evil face at the window of a reputable house. Truly Bob Tidball wa6 never to "hit the breeze" again. The deadly .45 of tho false friend cracked and tilled the gorge with a roar that the walls hurled back with indignant echoes. And Bolivar, unconscious accomplice, swiftly bore away the last of the holders-tip of the "Sunset Express," not put to the stress of "carrying double." But as "Shark" Dodson galloped away the woods seemed to fade from his view ; the revolver in his right hand turned to the curved arm of a. mahogany chair ; his saddle was strangely upholstered, and he opened his eyes and saw his feet, not in stirrups, but resting quietly on the edge of a quartered-oak desk. I am telling you that Dodson, of the firm of Dodson and Decker, Wall-street brokers, opened his eyes. Peabody, his confidential clerk, was standing by his chair, hesitating to speak. There was a confused hum of wheels below, and the sedative buzz of an electric fan. "Ahem ! Peabody," said Dodson, blinking. "I must have fallen askep. I had a most .remarkable dream. What is it, Peabody?" "Mr. Williams, sir, of Tracy and Williams, is outside. He has come to settle his deal in X.Y.Z. The market caught him short, sir, if you remember. ' "Yes, I remembcri What is X.Y.Z. quoted at to-day, Peabody?" "One eighty-five,' sir." "Then that's his price." "Excuse me," said Peabody, rather nervously, "for speaking of it, but I've been talking tb Williams. He's an old friend of yours, Air. Dodson,^ and^ you practically' have a corner in X.Y.Z. I thought you might — that is, I thought you might not remember that he sold you the stock at 98. If he settles at the market price it will take every cent he ian in the world and his home too to deliver the shares/ The expiession on Dodson's taco changed in an instant to one of cold ferocity mingled with inexorable cupidity. The soul of the man showed itself for a moment like an evil face in the window of a Teputable house. "He will settle at one eighty -xivo, v said Dodson. "Bolivar cannot carry double." The difference is against 0. Henry. Onions tells the story so well that you think it might be true; Henry tells the story so well that you think it ought to be truft, A NEW IRISHMAN. Ireland has found a man and a voice in T. M. Kettle, whose littlo book, "The Day's Burden," is published by Maunsel and Co. (Dublin; 2s 6d net). True, Ireland has never lacked men, and the men had never lacked voices ; "in Ireland all vitality is vocal." But Kettle is the right man, with a voice trained and restrained. He is the new kind of Irishman, that thinks before he speaks, speaks what he wishes, and ends like a cable message. By all accounts, the typical Irish attitude to things in general has changed greatly in the laat twenty years, ten years, five j f ears — and still is changing. Instead of wind and wailing there is plan and action. Instead of abortive attempts at revolution, there are successful attempts at evolution. Instead of an old despair there is a new hope. The root of the change .seems to be in the reformed land system, that permits the Irish to buy back their country with labour instead of with biood. From a nation with something to win, Ireland is turning into a nation with I something to lose, and much more to ' win. The national ideal persists in a field of fresh ideas that nave bred a fresh nabit of life — or In a frcsn habit of life that has bred fresh idea*. "We take T. M. Kettle for a sign of the times. Even nis name is a sign of the times ; it moves swiftly along its initials, it is concise. In tho last generation it would have been Timothy Mitchael MacCathoil — if it really is Timothy Michael MacCathoil. Half the English superiority lies in the Englishman's incapacity lo express himself without action. He is compelled to*clo things in order to explain what he means, in order to understand what he means. Only by deeds can he make himself visible to himself. When he acts, he exists. The Irishman has always heard himself talking. Historians recite with grim significance the story of the imoanent early Englishman who attended a meeting to discuss the threatened introduction, of Christianity. Ho said in the awkward English of his epoch: "Few words are best; let's kill the bishop." Then, if I remember Thierry rightly, tho meeting rose with great relief, and went and killed the bishop with treneral satisfaction. Kettle is a Dublin iiio,n and M.P., a well-known member of tlis Irish Party. We arc concerned \Mth his literary aspect in "Tho Day's Burden" — a particularly stimulating liltlo book of essays and articles about a dozen interesting subjects. The pages are crowded with modern thoughts phrased brightly. On the point of originality, jjve find Kettle lews a source than an impetus. He gives his own colour to tha -current of his time. A? \\a here ar®. J Ji !?"MckwaJter, Hyseiiig the mental

turmoil that polishes the tumbling pebbles of European ideas, Kettle is worth reading over and over till you have absorbed him. For many people with eyes he may be a new window to the world. j If the super-Irishman is going to write (is lucidly aiid compactly as Kettle, while preserving his fertility and brilliancy, the English will have a new reason for refraining from literature. A«d Kettle tloea not only write, he reasons, with that admirable manner of leasoning that dispenses with preliminary argument in order to state a conclusion that seems self-evident ac soon as you see it, because it really contains its own premisses, and the statement oxpressea these without saying them. Thus intelligent ladies will find the simple reiteration of "I love you" sufficient. They may wish to know why ; but ir the lover is gravelled for lack of words or meanings they have no difficulty in supplying their own obvious reasons^ The statement includes the argument. , Not that Kettle dispenses with dull passages or is always to be agreed with. Half his little book does not matter. The other half matters a great deal in an attractive manner. We quote as liberally as we can, not as freely as we would like to. What is the object of politics? Politics in its largest sense includes the ■whole control and management of public affairs by the Government in power, together with the whole process of agitation by which the masses of people not in power seek to influence and alter the conduct of things. Now, if you look in the text books you will find that the object of/government is order. But what is the object of order ? . . . Law and' order are not absolutes, but merely means to an end. To mistake them for ends in themselves is to regard the shell as the important element in the egg— the fence as the important element in the field. The cry of "Order for Order's Sake" is an ruinously foolish as that of art for art's sake, or money for. moneys sake. It is for the sake of humanity that all these must exist. Behind order thero is life, and it is only in «> far as it tends to increase the stun and improve the quality of life that any sy.--t)em of government or scheme of positive law is ethically justifiable. If you analyse the rights commonly ~egarded as essential and inalienable — the right to property, to personal safety, to marriaga — you will find as the common source of them all this right to life. And by life I mean not merely physical existence, but that rich human existence which. can be had only in community, that sort of life which Edmund Burke had in mind when he described the State as "a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection." Freedom is a battle and a march It has many bivouacs, but no barracks. The object of politics then is order, and the object of order is to increase the sum and improve the quality of -human life. 'The n,ation," says Anatole France in a line phrase, "is a communion of xnenori&s and of hope. We mean by a democratic University not only that the fees must be low, but that the civic fervour of the institution mu.?t be high, and that it must be a centre of creative democratic thought. Against the inevitable disappointments of politics one should take enthusiasm for the driving force and irony as a refuge. Cynicism, however excisable in literature, is in life- the last treachery, the irredeemable defeat. Politics, iot us renwmbcr, is the province not of the second-best, as has been said, but of the second-wor&t. We must be content, or try to be content, with little. But we must continue loyal to tae instinct that makes us hope much —we must believe in all the Utopias. If you study politics in Ireland you would do well to study the novitiate through which an idea passes before it becomes a law. It arises out of the misery and contains in it tha salvation of a countryside ; tho State Welcomes it with a policeman's baton. It recovers ; the State puts it in gaol, on a Diank bed, and feeds it on skilly. It becomes articulate in Parliament ; a statesman from the moral altitude of £5000 a year denounces it as the devilish device of a hired demagogue. It. grows old, almost obsolete, no longer adequate ; the statesman steals it, embodies it in an Act, and goes down to British history as a daring reformer. F-iom your own side also there will be something to be borne. If you cannot agree with a colleague as to tactics, even though they be but minor tactics, he may found a paper, or write a letter^ or a lyric, denouncing you to posterity as a traitor, red-handed with your counDry'si blood. I see no help tor it except to take these things as* mere byeplay decorative flourishes on the text of politics. After all there is the two-edged sword that will ncvet fail yon, <vith enthußiasmJ for one of its edges and iroiij for the other. However mired «nd weedy be the current of life there will be always joy and loyalty enough Aeil to keep you unwavering in the faith that politics is not as it seems 'in clouded moments, a mere gabble of selfish interests, but that it is the State in action. An(* the State is the name by which we call the great human cunspiraey agailnst hunger and cold, against loneliness and ignoiance; the State is the fostermothsr and warden of the arts, of love, of comradeship, of all that redeems from despair that strange adventure which k human life. A chapter of the New Geography may very well open somewhat after this fashion : Ireland is a small but itisuppvcssiblc island half, an hour nearer the sunset than Great Britain. From Great Britain it is separated by thu Irish Sea, the Act of Union, and the perorations oi tha Tory Party. The political philosophy of the last of these is even shallower than the physical basin of the first, ii eland is discovered from time to time by valiant journalists, mostly of a sensitive temperament. Their accounts vary. Ireland is, however, 'admitted by all to be unprogressive ; as, witness, when it is haJf-past twelve iv London it is only five minuies past twelve iv Dublin. Ireland nas been finally conquered at least vhree times ; she nae died in the last ditch repeatedly; she nas been a convict in the dock, a corpse on the itissecting-table, a street dog yapping at thij heels of Empire, a geographical expression, a misty memory. And with an obtubeness lo the logic of facts which one eafyonlj call mulish, she stili answers "Adsum." Her interdicted flag still floats at the masthead, and, brooding over the symbol, she still keeps building an impossible future on an imaginable past. English parties in turn .vipo her iw ever off the slate if practical politics. She remains wiped off for ayear or two ; but, as the sands slip, the sand-built policies crumble and collapse. New battalions loom up to the right wing or loft ; and thi? Tory presa lemembrrs the phrase of the Confederate general, who saw victory suddenly snatched nut of his hand? by Meagher's Brigade : "There oo<nes tl>atr damned i?reen flag again!" All this might seem a matter of racial pride, and a .sign of racial strength. But any Unionist can see with half an eye — and people are Unionists precisely; be- i

cause they have only half an eye to see with — that it is mere obstinacy. It is motived by the same folly which leads a man to waste his substance in litigation in order that he may live for all time as a leading case. Ireland clamours incessantly for Home Rule ; she wants to sit in her own armchair by her own fireside and mind her own business. But the very iteration of this demand is, to any ■wellconditioned mind, conclusive proof that it is not sincere. The unbroken triumph of the same programme at election after election shows it to be the watchword of a purely artificial agitation. To give Ireland what she asks for would clearly be to promote discontent and disloyalty. In view of the peril of foreign assault and invasion, it is an indispensable part of militatry tactics that Great Britain and Ireland should be enemies, not friends. Unless Irish members of Parliament were compelled to settle the question of English education, and English members of JfaTliament compelled to settle the question of Irish land tenure, the whole fabric of civilisation would be compromised. That most greedy of all the Imperialisms, the Commonplace. Shane O'Neill going in saffron pride to greet Elizabeth. . . . One article emphasises Otto Effertz, a gentleman Socialist, who wears his red tie with a difference. Socialism is before all else a question of culture and dignity. When we preach Socialism it is to the dignity of mankind that we must primarily appeal. Gentlemen of all countries, Ufiite ! Of the last Viscount, viowed satirically : Mr. Haldane is a formidable rather than a popular speaker, an authority, but not an inspiration. It is, of course, a question of personality. Ho looks like a composite photograph of six German philosophers, with a varnish of Renan, and that is not a bad beginning. But that singular voice of his which comes piping out of rotundity is too thin., light, and ( metaphysical ever to be a trumpet of democracy. It is in vain that all' men concede him the aureole of omniscience. It ie in vain that the House rejoices to see in his radiant presence a refutation of the epigram in which Eccle6ia6tes declares that increase of knowledge means increase of sorrow. He stirs the imagination to pleasant pictures. Tome, he is always some friar of the Ingoldsby Legends lifting black-letter Statutes and Gothic ideologies to the music of a penny whistle. Francis Thompson, "Hamlet," Anatole France, are among the other subjects.