LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 26, 30 July 1927, Page 21

LITERARY NOTES

A copy of the original edition of Colonel Lawrence's "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom," has been sold by Messrs. Harroda for £120.

Robert Briffault, who has written "The Mothers," a study of the origins of sentiments and institutions, though born in London, was brought up in New Zealand, served in Gailipoli and France, and won the Military Cross.

A correspondent has sent to "The Australasian" the following extracts from two distinct books as nn example in coincidences:—From A. E. W. Mason's "Hattoras":—"At first he saw little, because of tho gloom. In a while, however, he made out a bed stretched along the wall, and a thing stretched upon the bed. Tho thing was more or less shapeless, because it was covered with a black furry sort of rug. . . . Tho black furry Tug suddenly lifted itself from the bed, beat about Hatteras's face, and dissolved into flies." From Sir Hugh Clifford's "Alone: Early Days in Borneo":— "He looked through tho doorway, ,and as he did so a thing like a black hairy rug, which was lying on tho floor near tho bunk, rose into the air, with a loud buzzing sound, and immediately dissolved into a myriad atoms, separate, bloated, and noisy. They were innumerable flies."

Can the dead return? In Mr. Tresidder Sheppard's new historical romance, "Here Comes an Old Sailor," shortly to be published by Messrs. Hoddor and Stoughton, the medieval monks of Rcculver Abbey are faced with this question. One of them finds an old mariner washed ashore, drowned in a storm, but when they have laid him before the altar lor the night he comes miraculously to life again, and is haunted by elusive memories of the other world. But the story ia a story of this world, of tbo loves and hates and fierce adventures of very human men and women. Based on history and legend, on magic and witchcraft, and the grotesque superstitions of tho Middle Ages, it is historically true to its period, both in its natural and supernatural developments.