THE BOOKMAN

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 126, 29 May 1915, Page 16

THE BOOKMAN

" Pals First." By Francis Perry Elliott. Harper and Brothers, New York and London. "Pals First" is described as a romance of love and camaraderie, and this is an adequate description. The plot is an unusnal one, and perhap3 the story is a, little too highly idealised for everyday life, but it is none the less interesting and diverting. The story tells of Richard Fentress Castleman, a young man rich in this world's goods. It was his whimsical inspiration to take a vacation in search of health, a vacation of spirit as well as of body — "to let himself go" in easy camaraderie with other care-free vagabonds, and revelling gleefully in ( strange friendships made through seem- j ing, but not actual, capitulation of principles. In this year of wandering vagabondage, in which he broadened his mind | and regained health, Richard fell in with a man of interesting personality. They joined forces, and he gradually learned the extraordinary history of an embittered and wronged man. The "Dominie," as he learned to call him, had suffered | a long term of imprisonment — and his I love for his fellow men had turned to hate under the burden of his wrongs. Richard, in order to wean his strange friend to a saner and happier outlook, devised a whimsical scheme to this end, j with complete success. The story of the working out of this scheme is so cleverly told that the reader doea not expect the denouement until the very end of the book. "The Sound of Water," by Margarita S. Oerry. New Ybrk and London : | Harper and Brothers. Although Margarita S. Gerry hrvs a. large vogue in America, her works are comparatively little known here. Her stones are distinctly "American-esque," and for that reason may not appeal to some readers. Those book-lovers who shun American novels as being too exaggerative, need have no qualms about reading her latest production, "The Sound of Water." It is undeniably a brilliant detective story, and has the virtue of being a distinct departure from the orthodox detective fiction. It has a baffling plot, and one that defies the efforts of the reader who attempts to unravel a mystery by his own deductive powers before the story is fully told. A light little love story is interlaced in the plot, and altogether the volume (which is by no means a lengthy one) is well worthy of perusal "The Lone Star Ranger," by Zane Grey. New York and London : Harper and Bros. Zane Grey's latest work deals with wild life in Texas. It tells of the old Border days, when civil law was treated with contempt, and the quick shooter was really the only law that mattered. By no means, however, is the story of the "wild west" type, crammed with indiscriminate shooting. Rather, it is the tale of a man who tries to go straight in spite of the hereditary taint for murder which is a legacy from his father. The latter's six-shooter is handed down to the son, Buck Dtiane, with numerous notches cut in the handle; each of them representing a man called over the Great Divide before his time. Buck, however, battles against the inherent desire within him to commit murder, but at last he is absolutely compelled to do so in self-defence. It is his life or the other man's — whoever can "draw" first. Buck "draws" first, and from that time out he is an out law hunted by the Rangers, whose duty it is to preserve law and order Buck, on his way to hide himself in the littleknown places, falls in with another out law, but the latter is shot very soon after the acquaintanceship, and Buck is left to continue his way alone. He meets with stirring adventures, and therp is a touch of the pathetic in the way that the man who has tried to go "straight" and has not had the opportunity of doincj so is compelled to pursue his lonely perilous way. Then love plays a part, and Duaiie's instinct for blood is overcome by the influence of the woman he becomes' enamoured of. Thus, all ends as well as can be expected. The writer tells the story in the breezy, gripping style that is so suitable for describing life in the wild open places little trammeDed by law, and the volume k lifted from beyond the pale of a mere adventure story by deeds of chivalry arising out of a devoted love. PORTUGAL'S REVOLUTION. Mr. Francis Gribble, who not long ago threw lurid light upon the Habsburgs, has written: "The Royal House of Portugal." Says the Daily Chronicle's reviewer : , " Mr. Gribble's readers are familiar j with his lively, journalistic method. Some important pages in this book are concerned with the decline and fall of the House of Braganza, and the mere fact that an ex-monarch of this house happens by force of revolutionary circumstance to be a ratepayer just now in a London suburb has laid no special restraint upon his pen. We are little concerned to blame him. " Let it be admitted that ex-King Manoel was but an undergraduate in age at the date of the appearance on the scene of the dancing-girl whose expensive pranks the House of Braganza has had, and probably will have, some considerable cause to remember. But the undergraduate was also a, reigning Sovereign. He had been born to the trade of king. He bad received, through the assassination of his father, as violent a warning as can be administered to a. throne. " The affair is extremely interesting from the human point of view, and from the point of view — so far as we can pretend to arrive at it — of a more or" less impoverished country, which suddenly awoke to the perception that an idle young man of luxurious tastes was not the king: for its money. Tins seems to be in brief the explanation of the recent revolution in Portugal. The country is not exactly a Puritanical one, and was perhaps not excessively shocked at the spectacle of the dancing-girl's week-ends at the Palace. But it had no part in these entertainments, and no one could pretend that they were nationally profitable. The money that paid for them had been entrusted to the Sovereign for other and more necessary business. " So one day the guns of a new-born Republic were suddenly turned upon the Palace that had been casually consecrated to the dancing-girl, and help failing through the telephone, the Braganza house of cards toppled and fell — and on. no horizon is there any likely or acceptable tenant for it. But the reader will find much more in the book than the graphic story of the ignominious end of the House of Braganza." EMERSON ON ENGLAND. " I feel in regard to this aged England, with the possessions, honours, and trophies, and also with the infirmities, of a thousand years gathering round her, irretrievably committed as she now is to many old customs, which, cannot be suddenly changed ; pressed upou by the transitions of trade, and new and all hi calculable modes, fabrics, arts, machines, and competing populations "I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before ; indeed, with, a kind of instinct that ahe sees a little better in a. cloudy day, and that in storm and battla ana calamity «he hue n, secret vigour *nd_ & puljse Jjk« ctuinon,

" I see her in her old age, not decrepit, bnt young, and still daring to believe in her power of endurance and expansion. " Seeing this, I say, All hail, Mother of Nations, Mother of Heroes, with, strength still equal to the time; still wise to entertain and 6wift to execute the policy which the mind and heart of mankind require at the present hour, and thus only hospitable to the foreigner, and truly a home to the thoughtful and generous, who are born in the soil. "So be it ! So let it be !"' LITERARY NOTES Oapt. R. V. Campbell, the creator of " Private Spud Tamson" of the "Glesca Mileeshy," is a diverting -writer -who has done other things beside amuse. His tour of 50,000 miles in a kilt lecturing on behalf of the Empire's defence was Remarks a. contemporary) a remarkable thing in its -way He has fought with sword and pen, gathering in every field of experience a goodly harvest. "Private Spud." is issued, by Mesßra. Blackwood. Some philosophy from Mr. Eden Phillpott'e now novel " Brunei's Tower": — " Men are like pots, none perfect, if you look close enough, for perfection is denied all made of earth. But millions of men and pots are perfect enough to fulfil their purpose and do fine work and b« beautiful, or useful, or both. Our blemishes need not spoil us, and though, speaking as a Christian, we're all damaged goods by the nature of things; yet none is worthless, and. a faulty piece may often be lifted, to a very noble purpose." The author of "A Ballad of Trafalgar," just issued by Messrs. Simpkin Marshall, is aged sixteen, and the son of Mr. W P Dreaper, a London merchant. The young, poet has already produced some fifty other poems, which, it is stated, are to take book form very soon, Mr. Thomas Hardy, in reply to the Book Monthly's question as to the effect of the war on literature, writes : "Ultimately for good; by 'removing (from literature) those things that are shaken, as things that are made, that those things that cannot be shaken may remain.' — Heb. xii. 27." When Sir Charles Gavan Duffy became Premier of Victoria he was fond of naming new townships after old friends, and among those so honoured were Cobden, Stuart Mill, and Carlyle, and the last-named, writing to acknowledge the compliment, could do nothing but express a lugubrious hope that the place would have a less miserable career than the individual with whose name it was burdened. Curiously enough, though Stuart Mill and Cobden still flourish, Carlyle had but an ephemeral existence, and long since vanished from the map. It is stated that Colonel Clutterbuck will edit a work which will contain short biographies of the British officers killed in the war. It is to be called "The Bond of Sacrifice." Byron was an exception to the rule that authorship and hearty feeding go together. For the poet had a morbid dread of getting stout, and Trelawny has recorded of him that he was the only human being he had known with Belfrestraint enough not to grow fat. In 1813, in the exercise of his self-restraint, he lived on six biscuits a day and no drink but tea, fasting on occasions for 48 hours. Three years later he tried one thin slice of bread for breakfast and a vegetable dinner, and kept down his hunger in between by chewing tobacco. And, although this semi-starvation may have been bad in the long run, a visitor at the time could only observe that no man had brighter eyes or a clearer voice. In "The Hibbert Journal," Mr. J. M. Sloan discourses on "Carlyle's Germans." is," he says, " a certain qualified affinity between Carlyle and the royal stock of Hohenzollerns. It is a fact that the Kaiser, as a young man, studied 'Frederick the Great' with closest attention, and afterwards contributed to the purchase fund of Carlyle House, Chelsea."