BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Evening Star, Issue 14999, 5 October 1912, Page 4

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

' Designing Fate.' By John Sandes. London : Hodder and Stoughton. A reviewer in a London -daily newspaper recently expressed his amazement at the generosity _of publishers. By this ho meant to give utterance to his surprise that any firm of repute should be prepared to take the risk of publishing such extremely poor stuff as that he had to review. We ara not prepared to adapt this comment in its entirety in respect to the above, but we may demur to and question the wisdom of printing on the, paper cover thereof the words "An Australian's brilliant first novel." Such assertions provoke retort, and in the present instance one can snv in sincerity that there is nothing brilliant, or original, or extraordinary about it. 'Designing Fate' opens no new ground, introduces no new characters, unfolds no new plot. It is a simple, unsophisticated yam, alike in matter and manner, of the. normal type. A youth of 22 marries n.-.i adventuress of 32. whose two sons (twins) are born after the separation that was inevitable. Twenty years later we aro in New South Wales, where we meet the husband and father and the two young men, all unknown to each other, and'two lovely maidens, a fascinating widow, a Chinaman, a private -detective, and an old Indian servant. There are a visit to some smelting works, a kangaroo hunt, a fight between the Chinaman and Indian, and a shipwreck, from the hull of which one of the twins brings up a box that contains tlw-. secret of his birth and his mother's marriage certificate. Then all ends happily. Harmless, but hardly brilliant. THE DOCTOR AND HIS WORK. By Dr Arthur Lynch, M.P. The poetry of earth is never dead. And so, listening to the multifarious sounds of struggle, joy, or sorrow that arise from the toiling underworld, we need some larger scope, and intimations of a blissful hope, to round into the harmony of things the doctor's bitter cry. Dr Whitby's book gives me pain; it "brings also consolation. The pain conies from the realistic picture he draws of the present-day practitioner; the doctor arises from his pages as something between the cat's-m-eat man and the plumber—lms popular and lees freo of speech than the cat's friend, more insecure than the artist of the gaspipes. The consolation i.s found in Dr 'Whitby's great chapter on 'The Doctor as Priest and Philosopher,' of which the title hnsasavor of Carlyle, and the style of Bonaparte at Lodi : '* Medical men feel that they must be alert if they would safeguard the sacred interests and traditions that they hold in trust for posterity. Thy <\o not mean to allow these things*to bo wrested from them by social quacks or demagogues—of this I am well assured. . . . They will show how tho inverted pyramid can once more be firmly established on its base."

The inverted pyramid for the poor doctor consists of a broad base of hard work with a small and diminishing ap-sx of pay. The old lively medical student with tho gay abandon of his style—which often meant a gay abandon of his studies —has disappeared. The manners of tho present-day representative are modelled rather upon those of tho good curate in 'The Private Secretary.' His life is one of incessant effort; examinations loom continually in his perspective, like the dreadful leaps of a psychic steeplechase. His career is costly; his picture of life sober; his personal expenses few. There is a. vivid ima.go in my mind of a friend of mine, a medical student-, who in a mood of expand veness once ordered a toasted bun and butter with his lunch. His smiles gave way to apprehension. " I wonder," he murmured, "what she'll rush me for that,"

And then when, after years of upward toiling and, eventually, useful service to the public, the doctor ascends to the delectable mountains of what does he behold ? A flat rate, perhaps, of six shillings ! Our medical strident has become the " reticent, clean-shaven, water-drinking individual" we know. Dr Whitby deals vigorously with the question of hospital treatment where often the finances of tho patient are better than those of the doctor who treats him for nothing. Where is the plumber who spends a, thousand pounds on his. course and probes and solders numberlees bath pi pes for the glory of the cause? The chapter on ' The Economic Factor ' should be read by all aspirants. These who persist, after that may be well believed to have the vocation. 'We are told of the "chronic impecunicsity of the general practitioner," and we are reminded of

" cynical baseness and ingratitude, taking the form of deliberately planned and coolly executed biUcing." Bilking is not a pretty term, but at the close of "that passage of indignant rhetoric it etrikes like a crariio- • clast. These words have found the lees of life and they reek of that experience. Dr Whitby is very properly wroth with the , " wrong-headed individuals" who "tempt chemists, herbalists, and gymnasts" to invade the doctor's . province, and ho de- . nounces the "revolting pictures of blotched and pimply faces, pseudo-scientific dissertations, . . . portraits of 'American auctioneers masquerading as professors of tliis, that, or the other, "frock-coated gymnasts lecturing to a roomful of openmouthed doctors." He laments that tho practitioner " is net a phikeopher, even in that minor uncreative degree which is implied by philofoohic erudition." No wonder. Wo have heard of the gentleman who cultivated letters on a little oatmeal—that was fortitude: : but it requires a higher touch, on a flat rate of 6s. to "road the c,Teat masters" and to find "their rclcva.ney to the heeds of his vocation." Dr Whitby himself has read abundantly; he gives us stimulating discourses 'on philosophy, but possibly he takes Bernard Shaw over-sc.ricns.ly, and adopts Berrson simply as the intellectual fashion. I confess r was left speculating on this olla podrida of values: "All the first-rate thinkers—Plato. Aristotle, Plotinus. Leibnitz, Spinoza, Kant. Hegel. Schopenhauer, bmorson, down to Bergson." The healin/r art ism a big fermenting vat. It will be well if some, substantial product be the outcome, such as is suggested by the title Medicmo as a Guild:' Why not, inV, , e reed not <?w » <& a g in the thanks to Mr Llovd George" argument, but recognise calmly that, after "its many vicissitudes from the davs of Hippo-cr.-u.es to the present, the profession has reached a pass when it must assert its rights and its dignity, and in that spirit one hails Dr Whitby as a doughty f,4ter in the van. ° WOMEN AND LIBRARIES. There is outspoken condemnation (says tho London 'Daily Chronicle') of the ways of some women in the annual report ot the public librarian at Luton. Bedfordshire, lanous offences in relation to the literary property of the ratepayers are. charged against them bv this zealous official He says that the mutilation and tliett of periodicals from the library are infrequent except in the women's room It is his opinion, which, he says, is shared by nearly all librarians, that the provision ot separate reading rooms for wom»n i<= nearly always abused. Several librarians m the public libraries of London have expressed mteicsting views on the subject, lhe assistant librarian to the Westminster J üblic Libraries said : " Our expense has been the same. We formerly had a ladies reading room at the BuckintrVair latace road branch, but we were obliged to do away with it because so many periodicals were stolen or mutilated." ' —Privilege Sadlv Abused.— Inquiry at the Chelsea Public Library showed that a room for ladies was se v aside some years aero, but owing to the privilege being sadly abused it was closed. In this case "the complaint was not that, periodicals disappeared, or were cut, but that the ladies met and indulged in gossip during the afternoons, and "even turned the place into a dressing room "where they unblushingly changed their apparel." the Lewisham Public Library has never had a separite room for ladies, but even in the public room, where thev arc watched, they sometimes make off with or cut articles out of ladies' journals. A similar state of affairs was reported at Southwnrk Public Library, where the ladies' room had to be abolished because the occupants used not only to gossip but oven to sleep there, in' addition to which journals were frequently missing. Nowadays there is someone specially on observation duty in the public room to see that tho women do not walk off with papers. LAN MACLAREN'S RETIREMENT. _ Here is a lively story about lan Mael.iren and his retirement. It is fold by Mr W. IT. Ridoing, m his book 'Many Celebrities and a Few Others': '' Once when I was lunching with lan Maciaren at his house in Liverpool, and he was preparing to resign from the Sefton j Park Church, he speculated as to how he might be estimated after his departure. j In an instant the table and those around it vanished, and \ro were listening to two elders with whispering voices discussing a retiring minister. j '"A good man. a Terra good man,' one of them was saying. "'Aye, he was that. There'll be nobody to deny it. But awm thinking—weel, no, I'll no' say it.' " ' Awm thinking the same masel'. Was he not__a bit aff in his sermons lately, did ye say?' "' Weel, perhaps.' "' And no' so keen as he used to be.' " 'Puir man !' "'Ay, he did his best, nae doot.' "'Yb minded him in the Sabbath school? Strange, vcrra strange, hoo the attendance dropped. I canna account for it. What'll you be thinking':' "' I've heard creeticism, ay, severe creeticism ; no' that I agree with it. or disagree with it Mackenzie was telling me we'll be lucky to be rid of him, and Campbell that he was mining the kirk.' "'Ay, and Ferguson was saying—but Til no' speak ill of him.' " ' Puir man !' '"Awm thinking it's for the best he will be going.' " ' Maybe. The new man's fine—another John Knox—Mackenzie was saying.' "One could hear their undertones as they damned with faint praise and condemned by innuendo. ... He did not act the little ocene, but seemed to visualise it to us by hypnotic suggestion as he tat there and conj'ired us into it." THOUGHTS OF MASTER MINDS. " The noblest question in the world is: 'What good may I do in it?'" Beuj. Franklin. "Moral changes are slow. God's footsteps arc sometimes centuries apart."—Edwin Taylor. "If we aro over in doubt what to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on tho morrow that we had done."—Lubbock. " Daily prayers are the best remedy for daily cares."—Anon. "Tho virtue that comes out victorious iu the crisis must have been nourished and cultivated in the. humdrum moments."—Alexander M'Laren. " Men _ find love a power in the hands of the River as of the receiver, if only they knew how to use its strength."— Rosamund Southcy. " A healthy boy soon outgrows the mother's apron-strings; and only by loosening them, and recognising the growing creature's vital need of expansion, is the mastery retained."—Lilian Arnold. " Sorrow with his pick mines the heart; but he is a cunning workman, for he deepens the channels whereby happiness may enter, and hollows out new chambers for joy to abide in wheu he is gone."—M. Cholmondeley. It is one of the prime duties of life to express goodwill aJid gratitude. How well you live matter.?, but not how long.—•Seneca. Banish care and debt from vour mind.— Plautus. _ Man owes his superiority to woman entirely to his pockets. Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.— Shakespeare. It is our duty to cultivate a balanced judgment and to force ourselves to realise that there are moments when we are losing tho proportions of truth.—Anon. Too much fortune is bad fortune.—German proverb. My name is Might-have-been : I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell. —Dante G. Roasetti. Rich gifts that heaven delights- to see The poorest hands may hold, Tho love that of its povertyGiver kindly succor, prompt and free, Is worth its weight in gold. "Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, t And men below and saints above ; [ For love is human, and heaven is