THE BOOKMAN.

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 12, 13 July 1918, Page 11

THE BOOKMAN.

A BEACB OF NOVELS.

"The'Eayner-Slade Combination." By J. S. Fletcher. George Allen and Unwin, London. If anyone is curious to know how the Nastirsevitch jewels were stolen and recovered, and how in the process five people die violent deaths, it is all here. Mr; J. & Flwtcher adroitly gauges *be public demand for sensation, and he"i 3 prompt in meeting it. The story is somewhat involved, bub that is its charm. "AHertfyfee, who, like all true Yorkshiremen, had been born into the world with a" double portion of caution and a triple one of reserve," is the hero, at any rate, the most prominent personage in the story, and he apipears to be as much mystified by.the complexities confronting him' as the reader is. All he knows is that his cousin was entrusted with the jewels for safe delivery in England, and that he is found dead in his hotel room and the jewels are gone. There is excel-, lent material in the book for a cinema story, arid besides, the novel will help to relieve the tedium of a long railway journey. One curious feature in it is the frequency of references to drinking. The' novel consists of 318 pages. Drinking is referred to many times, beginning (p. 9) "took a whisky and soda," (p. 45) "Will you take anything?" (,p. 80) "Send up your- best champagne," (p. 84) "drank her first glass of champagne," (p. 89) "filled his hostess's glass." (p. 211) "A' drop of whisky will do you no harm," ft>. 245) "Have a drink while you're waiting;" (P- 257) "close by there's convenient pub," (p. 261) "Take a stiff 'un," (p. 262) "took a long pull from his glass," (p. 264) "took a reflective pull from his glass"--and so on. "Sadie's Conquest." By Harold Bindloss. Ward, Lock, and Co.', Ltd., London. The scenes in this latest story by Harold Bindloss, whose prolific pen has given the world many pictures of Canada and "The Great White Way," are laid On the Saskatchewan prairies. Into the prairie comes a railroad, and with it various people whoie views upon life's outlook are widely divergent. Very soon the love element enters into the story, and there is an incessant battle between two men for the love of one girl—the "eternal triangle," which forms the basis of so many human stories. The characters generally are exceedingly well depicted, aild the writing has a fluency which makes for easy reading. In some passages there, are' evidences of the author's haste; but a very interesting story is pleasingly told. Some of the descriptive passages are well done, and the atmosphere of the great prairie capably suggested. Sadie completes her conquest, when, under her influence, one of the men " makes good." LITERARY NOTES. " Constant effort is the price of literary production; the source of talent is a well that often seals up overnight." "When age forbids a woman to attract with her sex she sometimes falls back on the ordinary human virtues. This is a compensation not to be despised."—Michael Monahan in " New Adventures." (G. H. Doran and Co., New York.) '. Mr. John Masefield believes that the next considerable movement in poetry will come a few years after the end of the war. It will come in all countries at once, "as all great movements do," and will be a turning away from the war entirely. "Someone," he says, "once spoke of the romantio movement in England, iji which were Scott and 5 Keats and the rest, as the world's regret for the French Revolution. I think the next great.movement will be the world's escape and deliverance from this war. It probably will begin in Russia and move westward, rapidly, as kindling movements do." '■.. A correspondent of the Nation (New York) recalls the fact that John Stuart Blackie, who Visited Germany in 1853, recorded his impressions in several sonnets. One of these,'called "Berlin," is worth quoting tij-day:— " Statues on statues piled, and in the hand . Of each memorial man a soldier's sword! Fit emblem of a tame and subject land, Mustered and marked by a drill-ser- i geant-lord. And these long lines of formal streets, that go ' In rank and file, by a great captain's skill Were marched into this cold and stately show, Where public order palsies private will. Order is strong; strong law the stars commands; But birds by wings and thoughts by freedom lives; The crystalled stone compact and foursquare stands, But man by surging self-born impulse strives. Much have ye done, lords of exact Berlin, . ; But one thing fails—the soul to your machine! Mr. Charles Altschuler refers to the unfavourable effect which the^ American school "text-books" have had on the average American's view of Britain and the British Empire. "In spite of the controversies," he writes, "whifch at times raged.between-the two peoples, wo speak the same language as the English; our customs have been: fashioned after theirs; our legal procedure has been founded upon theirs: their ideas' of go- > vernment and their conception of liberty are ours as well. In.spite of the wars we have fought against them, we have never thought of. turning to nny< other, nation as a model for what is most essential in our public and private life." There is au appropriate ease and swiftness of motion, if there ia not much else, in this little piece, called "Flight," from Mr. Percy Haselden's small volume, "In the Wake of the Sword":— „.. ■ Above the meadows, flower-strewn, A monoplane against the sky Gleams like an amber dragon fly That slums an.infinite lagoon; Over the elender aspen trees On swift unerring wing it comes — ■ The keen propeller whirrs and hums Like giant swarms of angry bees; High overhead it pulses on Westward into tho" waning light, And now within the web of night. It dips and wavers and is gone. ' "When you sell a man a book you don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue—you soil him a whole new life," says Christopher Morley in "Parnassus on Wheels." In "A Writer's Recollections,"' by Mrs. Humphry Ward, the writer of "Robert Elstnere " describes how, in the year 1870, when she was 18, she met George Bliot and G. H. Lawes at a Sunday evening supper at the Pattisons'— Mark Pattison was then rector of Lincoln College. "George Eliot sat at the rector's right hand. I was opposite her; On my left was George Henry Lewes, to whom I took a prompt and active dislike. George Eliot talked very little, and I not v at all." Mrs. Humphry Ward then tells how, later that evening, "George Eliot sat down in the darkness and I beside her. Then she talked for about 20 minutes, with perfect ease and finish, without misplacing a word or dropping a sentence, and I realised at last that I was in the presence of a great .writer. Not a, great talker."