IN BOOKLAND

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 23 July 1927, Page 16

IN BOOKLAND

Mr Newman Flower, the literary director of Casseli and Go., has obtained financial control ox that firm. He is an intimate friend of Thomas Hardy, and author of a standard life of Handel.

In choosing his words, the poet knows what lie wants, said Professor Laseelle.s Abercrombie, in a recent address, and lie knows exactly when he has got hold of it; he does not know, and he does not want or need to know, how to get hold of it, and to this, so far, psychology has had nothing but poly.s\ llabic solemnity to contribute.

That courageous traveller Rosita Forbes has returned to London irom Africa, where she lias been directing a film of one of her own stories about the "Hift struggles. In private life she is Mrs McGrath..

Mr Dale Collins, the author of “Ordeal,” lomeriy of Melbourne, will Ibis month marry Mrs Aileen Davies, who is also an Australian. Mr Collins has just, completed a new novel entitled • The Sentimentalists.”

Airs Marv Hughes, of Tvissa Farm. Llangollen ’ (Wales), who claims to have inspired the nursery rhyme •‘Marv had a little iamb,” celebrated her Bbth birthday in May. She states that a Miss Burl, of London, who was staying in the neighbourhood, wrote the verses, alter a lamb which Marv had reared on her father’s farm had followed the child two miles to school.

This note about the Prince destined to become King Edward appears in “The Diary of Lady Frederick Cavendish” (which Mr John Bailey has edited), under the year 1872: —He does not get on with me, nor, indeed much with any but chaffy, fast people, though always kind and delightful ii. manner like most of ’em ; my conviction i.s that, when he succeeds to the Throne and his duties to do, he will do far better than now seems likely; but the melancholy thing is that neither he nor the darling Prss. ever care to open a book.

Sanwiched between naval yarns in (ear-Admiral Sir Svdney Eardley-Wii mot’s “An Admiral’s Memoirs” is the story of an American who came to a town and advertised that on a certain day he would exhibit a wonderful animal never before captured “He hired a large hall, which was filled on the day. As the audience got impatient the clanging of chains and loud growls were heard'. , Then the showman rushed, hair on 'end, and shouted. “Save yourselves, save your wives and families, the Guayasc-utis is loose.’ The hall speedilv cleared, and so did the showman with the cash, nor was ho heard of again.”

Miss Sancles looks backward

homotimes now, when playing faiuilv bridge for threepence a hundred in an English drawing-icom, the memory oi those wild jolly nights comes over me, and 1 am lost in another world. So xar away it all seems now that I wonder whether it was really myself, or ■only something I dreamed. Instead ot the powdered nose ox my partner, I seem to lie looking at the grizzled beau and unshaven chin of the commandant, and the scented drawing-room suddenly fades away into the stone walls of a tiny hut lighted by a couple of candles stuck into bottles, and thick with tobacco smoke, where five or six officers and I sit crowded on hunks or camp stools. For evening dress mudstained, blood-stained khaki breeches and tunic, and for vanity bag a revolver. The camp table was covered by the thick brown folds of an annv blanket, and before each was a pile oi .Serbian hank notes and gold, and a tumblerful of Ted wine. Then came a batman with another relay of little cups of thick, sweet Turkish coffee, which he brought about every hour. But here comes a trim maid with tea. and 1 return to the prosaic drawingroom with a start, and the realisation that 1 am a “lady” now, not a “soldier and a man,” also that Serbian soil is resting lightly on the graves oi many of those happy comrades I have seen seeing in my dreams.