THE BOOKMAN

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 121, 23 May 1914, Page 13

THE BOOKMAN

THE GORGEOUS EAST "Stories of India." By Rose Eeinhardfc Anthon. London : William Heinemann. From the authoress it is learned that the outlines of these stories were taken down from a guru. "Dressed in garments of my own poor weaving (writes Mrs. Anthon) I send them forth into tho Western world with the hope that, though lacking much of the colour and beauty of their original dressing, they yet may inspire in others the interest they have awakened in me." Here is a collection of thirty-one stories, so they are short. Some of them appear to be of great antiquity, others are modern The .most beautiful story (and, by the way, some deep spiritual thought seems to underlie each one of them) is that of the Yogi and the Courtesan. It is told how the holy man sits, full of hate and contempt, at the gate of the woman's house. In his saffron robe he sits, slowly piling up a pyramid of stones, each stone representing a sin of the woman. "Accursed of God and man," J he exclaims, with muttered fury, "how 'have thy sins grown and multiplied, ! until now they are beyond the count of man, and even, perchance, of God." He had watched her illicit lovers enter her house, and for each one he added a stone to his heap. His hatred grew in intensity from day to day, and, in his spying on a sinner, he forgot his own prayera and spiritual exercise*. He lived for one thing— to feed the fire of his hatred of the woman and to pile up the stones representing her sins into a heap that grew larger day by day. At last the Messenger of Death comes to the Yogi. As he is dying his hatred of the harlot becomes incandescent. The woman looks from behind her curtains at the holy man out in the sun. She weeps for her sins, and longs to think that, hopeless as her case is, the Yogi will receive a gracious welcome at the gates of Paradise. But the Messenger of Death, before conducting the Saint to the place of shadows and wailing, where the angry souls writhe like flames, exclaims — "Thy eoul is steeped in sin and evil and vice, and, therefore, in this place thou must abide until thou art cleansed from thy sins<" "Sins! What sins?" / cried the Yogi. "I have committed no sins. I have sat in front of the harlot's house for years and bewailed her sins. I myself committed no sins." "Thou hast steeped thy thoughts in her vices. Thou hast concentrated upon them until thou hast imbibed them and covered thy soul with them as a mantle. Every stone by which thou didst count that poor outcast's gins hangs about thy neck as a chain that drags thee here. The little hill that rose in j bitterness before thee is now as a moun- ! tain upon thine own soul that weighs thee hellward. And here, among the damned, must thou expiate the sins which thy pitilessness and hatred have brought upon thee. Here are thy sins awaiting thee." Contemplating the mountain of his sins, the Yogi's eyes are turned for a moment to see a woman Jed by a great •white angel up to the great heights of light. It was the harlot; and all about her was glory. She had been endowed with all the virtues she had credited to the Yogi, and he, for his part, had bocome the embodiment of all the vices he had seen in her during his long watchings of her goings and comings. _ Rectification of some slight grammatical errors in the book would not impair the charm it will possess for most readers, critical and otherwise. " WAKE UP, ENGLAND !" "The Dignity of Business." By H. E. Morgan. London : Ewart, Seymour and Co., Ltd. Mr. H. E. Morgan's book is further described in the sub- title to "The Dignity of Business" as "Thoughts and Theories on Business ' and Training for Business." It is really an extension of the King's famous saying at the end of his world-tour as Duke ot York: " Wake up, England !" Mr. Morgan advances little that is new. He thrashes the dead horse of dead languages in England's public schools, and urges them to take up, as a branch of their curriculum, training for business. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are also asked to do their share in diverting into the channels of commerce the intellect that | now flows into tho canyons of the professions. The examples of Germany and i the United States are quoted as showing ! what our trade rivals are doing in the study of the theory of business, while England still learns it by rule of thumb. There is the venerable appeal to the Consuls of Great Britain to help their country's trade, and the many other pleas which were born of the pessimism of the early years of the century. And yet British trade and commerce were never so prosperous as in the year 1913. Theie is much, however, in Mr. Morgan's arguments, if not so much as there was a few years ago. England is waking up, and fairly well holding her own. The problem, he says, we have to face, is " the education of more business leaders — the grafting on to the commercial community of more of the best of the race, many of whom are now wasted by unpractical training." The book is stimulating, and should do good in a conservative community. Here is a dictum worthy of wide application: — "Promotion should always come from within the firm itself. New blood, useful as it is, should only be introduced when expansion makes it absolutely necessary, or when internal resources completely fail. If employees could bo made to feel that the chances of promotion were not prejudiced by the unwise introduction of new material a better feeling between master and man would inevitably result." The" book is excellently printed and got up. BOOKS DESIGNED TO HELP. "Do Something! Be Something!" also "The Efficient Age." By Herbert Kaufman. London : Hodder and Stoughton. These are two of the latest collections of "smart" sayings of Herbert Kaufman. They are displayed in paragraphs, aie i quite American in their terseness, idiom, "and structure. Both books will, no doubt, materially help those who pin their faith to proverbs. But the .proverb is most misleading and millions have been' misled^ and will be misled by it. Kaufman, like most proverb manufacturers, largely overlooks the personal equation and the personal environment. He ought to know that many men have failed to make their mark because of unfavourable, uncontrollable circumstances, and many other men have (as he would say) "got there," and themselves and others have wondered how on earth tlioy ever arrived. Others, again, have been born there. Any man, even Kaufman, if he were honest enough to point out the fallacy of leaning upon many of his trite sayings, knows of men who but for the circumstances into which they have been born would never have leached the positions they hold to-day, if industry, intelligence, and straightforwardness were the only essentials to success. And then what and whore is "there" to which so many are urged to "arrive?" Does it mean getting rich and being successful in business? If so, then Smilea's Self Help and las £o»u«l generuiiy. is not sft?t» but ofljy nge& »v^,

If to achieve great goodness in "our daily walk and conversation" is the end. in ! Herbert Kaufman's view, then there is an older and much more dignified vade mecum at the service of the man who •wants to get on ; an authority that is not trite in its expressions, and yet is simple alike to the erudite and unjeamed. The two little books under notice ! will appeal to a very lauge number oE readers, no doubt, but they tell nothing new. Only Kaufman's way of telling old truths and half truths is new and distinctly American. THE NEW "BOHN." Bonn's Popular Library, published by G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., London, has j been further added to by the following volumes received though Whitcombe and Tombs: — "Dr. Thome," "Framley Parsonage, 1 ' "The Last Chronicle of Barset," "The Small House of Ailington," by Anthony Trollope. A course of Trollope is one of the best preparations for intelligent novel reading that can be recommended. It is only by making itself to some extent familiar with the spirit of the " 'Sixties" that the younger reading generation can realise how far the world has travelled, especially the English world. It was this fact that made the Arnold Bennett play, "Milestones," such a success, reconstructing as it did a rather important period in the life of the British public (our fathers' young days) ; and comparing it with our own times, the beginning of the 20th century. No writer is better able to conduct one back into the 'sixties, the mid-Victorian age, as it is sometimes contemptuously called, than Anthony Trollope. The reader in search of sensations will find none in. Anthony Trollope, but clever character portrayal he certainly will find, and a grace and elegance of style that few novelists of to-day possess. Other volumes in the new Bonn's which have come to hand are Hooper's "Campaign of Sedan," with maps (which every Territorial officer should possess), Poushin's Prose Tales (a most able translation, preserving the Russian flavour, by T. Keane), ''Arabian Nights" (translated by Edward William Lane and edited by Stanley Lane-Poole), Vaughan's Poetical Works (mostly devotional verse of exquisite beauty, first published early in the 17th century), Blake's Poetical Works (with a prefatory memoir by W. M. Rossetti), Emerson's Poems, Plotinus, Goethe's "Faust," Manzoni's "The Betrothed" ("I Promessi. Sposi"), Five Essays by Macaulay ("Oliver Goldsmith," "Samuel Johnson," "John Bunyan," "William Pitt," and "Francis Atterbury"), and finally Trelawney's "Adventures of a Younger Son." The size of this library is such as to commend it to every reader with a breast-pocket in his coat, the printing is bold and black, the paper tough and thin, and the binding is modest in appearance but such as to look well upon the shelf of any library. The price, one shilling (net) per volume, enables those with the slenderest ol purses to begin a library of the best in English literature and translations from the greatest classical and continental writers. The old Bohns wero published at 3s 6d. LITERARY NOTES Dr. L. Haden Guest, in an exceedingly lucid and well-written, brochure, states the theosophical attitude towards the perplexing social problems of our time. He holds that at the present time all society is in the melting ppott t momentous changes have recently and rapidly taken place, but larger and more portentous changes are to come and that soon. But, however beneficent for tho poor in money, health, and intellect such changes may be, there is still wanted "the certain knowledge of world law which the spiritual science of theOsophy gives, and we lack the social organisation that can build firmly on that law/* Society must make itself ready for those great changes. So far as the theosophist is concerned the piesnce of God in the world, the existence of a divine plan of evolution for the world, these are " certainties and realities," but to men themselves belongs the duty of " conforming our little human plans to that great plan, of helping to work out our human destiny to its divine end." It is at such times, Dr. Guest points out, that " the great hierarchy of Divine Beings who rule and direct our evolution send forth from themselves one whom we know as the world teacher, lie has been in the world as the founder of the Egyptian, Greek, and Indian religions, as Hermes, Zoroaster, Orpheus, Buddha, Krishna, and latest of all as Christ, ffim we expect again, now, to reproclaim the eternal verities, to reunveil the profotindest religious truths, to set again on its way the new and mord splendid civilisation which shall emerge out of the pain and confusion of the present." Dr. Guest states his views very clearly and, with here and there a touch of brilliancy from tho strictly theosophical standpoint. His views command respect, even if they be not necessarily accepted. From Gordon and Gotch copies of the April numbers of The Strand and Wide World magazines have been received, both Newness publications The feature of The Strand is the article by the In-fanta Eulaiia of Spain on "The Sovereigns of Europe." She describes the late King Edward as "one of the cleverest Sovereigns in Europe" ; the Kaiser as "altogether charming and unaffected and delightful" ; the Tsar as having a "charming kindliness" ; Victor Emanuel of Italy as "sufficiently socialistic in leanings to be in sympathy with the progress and ambition which he helps to direct"; the> young King of the Belgians as "one of the wisest agd cleverest of its rulers," and] Ferdinand of Bulgaria as having "a wonderful mind." Other articles show how a hat of one shape can be transformed into li new hate merely by trimming. Marie Lohr, tho pretty young Australian actress, tells her theatrical life story (which began at 4). W. W. Jacobs and Richard Harding Davis are among the etory tellers, and theTe its otherwise a great variety of reading matter. The Wide. World covers a vast geographical area, taking its readers from the Arctic regions 10 East Africa, from Peru to the Straits Settlements. Adventures with wild beasts and savages, struggles with the sea. and the log, are told vi thrilling sentences. Tho illustrations materially strengthen, the interest in the various adventures. The Wide World shows no ' signs of falling off in the high purpose of telling "true" stories far which it wa6 founded. In a recent lecture in London on "the Stagp Irishman ' Canon Murray ("George A. Birmingham") referred to the catasj trophe which bofel li eland in the middle of the nineteenth century with famine and disease as having slain the stage Irishman. In his place had come a serious, purposeful being more eager to do things than to laugh and jest, and rather than that Ireland should lose her power for laughter altogether the lecturer was of opinion that a reversion to the reckless debonair type of being was preferable. "'The English, Scotch, and French," said Canon Hannay, "apparently object to seeing themselves caricatuipd. Tho Englishman, for in&tance, thinks -the man who caricatures himself a, born fool, while the Scotsman considers such an act nothing short of blasphemy, lie is obviously a woik of Cod. I fake H that we Irish haven't such <i good opinion of ourselvovs, mid thnt \vu have been so long derided) that we have at luht come to ucuopb Uis tew eHinj^Ai «tb«» b*v» bad