THE BOOKMAN

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 150, 26 June 1915, Page 20

THE BOOKMAN

"The Billy Sunday Book." by W. T. Ellis, LL.D. London : The Vir Publishing Company. The words "Billy Sunday" mean little or nothing to an average New Zealander. The man in the street might guess the syllables to be the pseudomym of a pugilist. No mistake of that kind would be made by an American, for Billy Sunday is one of the best advertised men in the States— one who is "boomed" by friend and foa alike. Says the admiring Dr. Ellis :—: — "Any tabulation of Mr. Sunday's influence must give a high place to the fact that he has made good press 'copy' ; he has put religion, on. the front pages of the dailies." In other words, as the Americans say, Mr. Sunday (who is the Eev. William Sunday) does a "smart stunt" and makes a good "story." Mr. Sunday fishes for souls and tho press angles for "copy," and both seemed to be well pleased. Mr. Sunday is an athletic evangelist; he firmly believes in "all-in" fighting with Satan ; any tackle will do — high, low, or middle. One gathers from Dr. Ellis's remarks that if Mr. Sunday had not been an expert a-t baseball his equipment for evangelism would have lost much of its power. He is an energetic gesticulator ; he makes wonderful and unexpected movements ; he preaches with his whole body — and with any furniture which is portable, for he will swish a chair to emphasise an argument. He is on terms of familiarity with the Deity, and is altogether an assertive moralist. Many "Sundayisms," quoted by Dr. Ellis, are mere trite commonplaces, expressed in American or other slang — for example, "Don't get chesty over success." Other specimens are :—: — "God likes a little humour, as evidened by the fact that he mads tho monkey, the parrot — and some of you people" j "Bring your repentance down to a spot-cash basis" ; <f Ha, Ha ! Old devil, I've got you beat." This critic likes not the Billy Sunday style, but this writer Is ready to admit that gymnastic evangelism may thrill many others, and that the Rev. Billy may have power to prod them on to high paths of rectitude by the swinging leg of ar light Austrian chair. "You Never Know Your Luck," by Gilbert Parker. Hodder and Stoughton, London, New York and Toronto. "You Never Know Your Luck," Sir Gilbert Parker's new novel, is the story of a matrimonial deserter, and is rich in local colour — the local colour of a. prairie town on the pathway to the Rockies, though the roots of the story reach out as far as Ireland. The hero is Shield Crozier, an Irishman with a penchant for gambling. In a wild bid for fortune he threw away liis last remaining patrimony, and rather than eat from the hand of his wife, a proud and narrowminded little woman, he suddenly left her in order to gain financial independence, and his own self-respect. Under an assumed name he made his way to the Far West, and there in a prairie town he won the friendship of two very fine women— Mrs. Lynan, the keeper of a boarding-house, and her daughter Kitty. Crozier, who subsequently became involved with some land sharks, was shot after giving evidence at a certain trial, and for many weeks lay between life and death, being devotedly nursed by Kitty and her mother. During that time Kitty, against the dictates of her own heart, wrote to Crozier's wife, whose identity she had discovered, and urged her to come to her husband. Mona Crozier found it hard to forego offended pride and injured self-esteem, and had a long way to travel before she regained tho love of her husband — who was more -than half in love with Kitty, a girl who was the essence of life. It was on Kitty that the future depended, and a poignant situation is capably handled by that young woman. The author has engaged his analytical gifts in portraying the character of the two women so widely opposed to one another, and the story adds to his literary laurels. CARLYLE'S GERMAN" WRITINGS. Ifc is said that the composition of •"Frederick the Great," a small portion of the manuscript 61 which was sold at Christie's recently, helped to modify Carlyle's early enthusiasm for Germany. " I don't suppose a man was ever more weary of a task than I was of my ' Frederick the Great,' " he confided to Charles Eliot Norton. "It was a good ton years' work, and from the beginning it was a vexation of the spirit and weariness of the flesh. It was good hard drudgery — sifting mostly a monstrous accumulation of lies— and of all the nations the German lies with, the most scrupulosity and detail." But Carlyle is not harder on German liars than Mr. Roosevelt is on Carlyle. In the Ladies' Home Journal Mr. Roosevelt writes :—: — " Having' read Carlyle's ' Frederick the Great ' — with its splendid description of the battles and of the unyielding courage and thrifty resourcefulness of the iron-tempered king; ajid with its screaming deification of able brutality in the name of morality, and its practice of the suppression and falsification of the truth under the pretence of preaching veracity— l turned to Macaulay's essay on this subject, and found that the historian whom it has been the fashion of the intellectuals to patronise or deride showed a much sounder philosophy and an infinitely greater appreciation of and devotion to truth than was shown by the loquacious apostle of the doctrine of reticence."