FLOWER AND SONG

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 15, 18 January 1930, Page 21

FLOWER AND SONG

"THE AVIZAKD IN THE FOREST"

'' Windharps.'' By Marion Cran. London: Herbert Jenkins, Ltd. Former delightful books by Marion Crau havo treated largely of gardens, and gardening, but "Windharps," though "gardenesque," contains many other matters, and all of interest. High up in a room of a famous Rhine castle sho heard the '' windharps'' which gave the name to the book, where ''the little winds of dawn speak sweetly, but the rough gales press out dissonances; when the fury of the storms die down the music comes through in shuddering, sobbing sweetness, harmonious again. Then away back home again, with a delightful description of the welcome from the garden and its beauties. Then there comes a talk about getting rid of superfluous flesh, and an amusing description :s given of the various doctoring, followed by a visit to a "wizard in a forest," who cast away drugs, and gave ordinary diet, and walks, etc., with the conclusion, "Here was I with my clothes hanging around me in festoons and garlands—a full merry skeleton, restored to strength with a clean bill of health, and the woods cluttered up with the pounds I had lost in them on the long adventurous walks. 'The chemistry of each body is different; you have to learn your own, that is all, said the wizard. . . . Adorable apostle of commousense, he cures the troubled bodies that come to him, and sets them in the path of health." Marion. Cran asked an English doctor why it was not dono in England, and the reply was, "Our people are not interested in dietetics"—and that was that. Marion Cran then introduces a love story—not one of the usual sort, quite, but a curious coming-together of two people who met and separated several times wjsely, till life had taught them many lessons, and their union was one of ideal happiness afterwards because both had developed the wonderful quality of "understandingness." There is a great deal about animals in the book, and those who love the makers of music in the air, also the dumb friends of mankind, the domestic cats and dogs, will have great joy in the stories of these, which are full of observation, and true love of the lesser creation. Then there ia something about the "singing daughter" and interesting information about the modern girl and boy, all interwoven with a beautiful embroidery of flowers and scenery and gardens. . • .

I suppose (says the writer in connection with a cold frame and nursery for littlo plants) ovcry woman has tucked away in her make-,up somewhere tho desire to protect and to rear into health and strength small weak things, whether they are babies, kittens, dogs, or little flower plants. ... I have often observed that a lady gardener has no eight-hour day for her young plants. Their infantile needs aro much more Important to her than is tho call to stop work at the stroke of the hour which seems to obsess most men.

Then later Marion Cran comes to a description of the improvement by tlie Singing Girl of a friend who utterly neglected her appearance. She tidied up her bushy eyebrows, shortened her long skirts, and then "Lesley would get those lumps of dark hair shorn off her somehow. Hair is a barbarism; a dreadful unhygienic mass which women used to stick together with metal spikos and carry on their long-suffering heads. Poets and old-fashioned journalists still rave about hair; but women have given up admiring whiskers." Marion Crau writes an appreciation of wireless, and speaks of the joy it would liavo been to her father, a true lover of beautiful music; ono who hungered and thirsted for it, and yet in a far-off littlo country parsonage, could get so little. If, she says wistfully,;it could only havo come to him out of tho air into his study? Then about gardens, their name is legion, the selfish garden, the "picking garden," and many others. "Of all the gestures we humans make to each other tho sweetest is that wo make with flowers. The eloquent dumb word passes, more delicately than speech, from one to another. With flowers wo seal our friendships, utter our welcome, say farewell, heal our quarrels, speak our sympathy with the glad and the sad." And yet Marion Cran says "the best of us never comes to expression," and her readers must needs feel that if she has not put forth tho best of herself to tho world, that best must be a wonderful thing, and that the second-best is something to bo very thankful for, giving her appreciation accordingly.—M.H.C.