CURRENT TOPICS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 9183, 6 April 1910, Page 6

CURRENT TOPICS.

(By Frank Mobton.) One hears so much about the excellence of health Ihat some natural perversity leads me now to write a cheerful word or two in praise of illness. I happen to know, because I'm just through with a few miserably bad days. 1 have had to take a nauseous mixture, bitterer than any cynic's tongue, a tab cspoonfu every three hours—you know the sort ot thin" I have been ill so seldom in mv life that I have never been especially troubled by any short slip mto the place of pain. These times were 1 told myself, the necessary times when a man's pleasant vices come iipine to roost. But a friendly • doctor told me aclay or two ago that the thing coming to "me is neurasthenia. Even now, .1. can't tell you precisely what neurasthenia. is; but it has a fine long name, and I'm proud of it: it looks well on a lcllow's label to the Beyond. But one looks upon that label now affixed with some thrills not pleasant. It means, "Life is over for you, grey ■ dog :. the end in sight!" And one's startled pulses beat a new refrain. "Only a. matter of time." they cry, "Only a matter oi time 1" It is -a sort of grim awakening. this; for we are in no great haste to have done with life, you and I. _ We have had many buft'etings; but, ttian.i God. we have had many joys. _ Illness is a food thing, because it brings _ a man face to face with himself and with the image of God (however blurred) that is within him. We hide tho corpses of our worst days privily away m odd corners, dreadfully afraid that tho respnctablo world will some day suspect their presence there. But when we are ill. some sharpened sense enables us to see the challenging eyes of the Imago within us—to hear the splendid Voice that cries. "Bring out your dead! .Illness clears tho mind of all sorts or queer miasmas, and in their place sets a ."-racious array of pure intentions. On. but the saint 1 am when I am sick i I have daylight dreams of myself as prophet, martyr, seer. I preach like Savonarola, till all the world sobs in a passion of sorrow for its sins. I am wise as Hypatia. chaste as Joan, incorruptible as liampden; I am everything that something at the back of me always wants to be, and can't. But such a time of spiritual searching must. I think, bear some poor fruit of goodness when one returns to robust health and one's accustomed aptitude for transgression. After every sickness one finds that some darling vice has lost some of its flavour : that some hurtful habit has loosed some part of its hold. When the hidden dead are brought out, the house must at any rate be sweetened for a time. There is- another joy of sickness: the special charm that books have for tho mind when tho body is weakened for a space. I have in my bedroom a table that usually holds a litter of papers and memoranda, unanswered letters, _ unpaid bills, fractured cigars, ashes of dead tobacco, a skull that has come down tho years with me and makes grinning pretence of being a paperweight. But when I am sick all the litter on this tablo is swept to the floor, and (he table is censecrato to nobler uses. It is dragged alongside my bed. and holds at the outset nothing "but a notebook and a_fa- ' vourite pipe. (You will have noticed , that a favourite pipe makes good company, even when one is too ill to smoke.) Then the fun begins. One or other of the good souls that aro always about the house goes into my den downstairs and brings me the book or two I ask for. I dip into the books, picking out a passage here and there, rejoicing in some well-beloved phrase or simile. Then, if I can get about at all, I go down in a disreputable old dressing-gown of mine, and pick another book out of my little lot. Upstairs again we go,, and the process of extracting the marrow is repeated. And so on and on. till in the end the book-table is piled high with books. Now, tho books one picks out for such occasions arc. I think, excellent indications of the qualities and limitations of a man's mind. I am writing this in bc-d. and, at whatever cost of incurring your displeasure or meriting your contempt. I shall give you a list of the books that have found a place on my table during these few days of sickness. The Bentloy Ballads. "Fasting for the Cure of Disease," by Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard. "Maurice Maeterlinck," par Gerard

Harry. "Alpha. Centauri," by M. Forrest. "The Winged Destiny," by Fiona Maclcod. "Across the Plains." by Robert Louis Stevenson. Oeuvrcs melees do Saint Evremond, annotees par Charles Girand, de l'lnstitut. "La nouvelle Sodomc," parEdmond Fazy. "A Crystal Age. , ' Chansons dc P.-J. de Beranger. "News from Nowhere." by William Morris. "The Pageantry of Life." by Charlos Whiblcy. "Lo Moyen do Parvonir, par Beroalde de Verville. "Orlando Furioso." di Lodovico Ariosto. "Femmes," par Paul Verlaine. Sonnets by Lord Alfred Douglas. "History of Civilization in England," by Henry Thomas Buckle. "On Liberty." John Stuart Mill. Oeuvres choisios de Piron. "Snacks.", by Esther Dclaforce. There are "a few other odds and ends, but with these we needn't trouble. BENTLEY. This is the best ballad book modern England has lo show. It is as wellknown, I suppose, as ■ "The Pickwick Papers." It is compact of choice things. Here we have preserved imperishably the masterpiece of R. 11. Barham and the perfectly inimitable Father Prout. _ There are others, varying in their qualities and stylos; but there is not in the book .a single thing not good and fresh. The ballads written by the greater men are known to everybody; but here is a. clover bit of fooling" that is more likely to be forgotten. PHASCOLOTHERION BRODERIPI. Hail to tho patriarch Phascolotherion! Owen has had him to build a new era on. Grant did the same to found many a query on. .Found about Stonesfield, where Limestone so shelly is; There he's embedded, ami keeping right well he is : Look at his jaw. and you'll guews what his belly is. With him there dwelt by the primitive river a Similar genus of small insect)vora ; Free from the then uninyented carnivora. Nothing appeared in,!ho scale of creation Higher than he through the Wealden formation — Even tho chalk could not show a cetacean.

Hail to the first of the British Mammalia; One of the order of Marsuilia; Nearly at present confined to Australia". The extraordinary thing is that all these ballad-writers wroio with apparently equal facility in English, French. Latin, and Greek. Education had not yet become cheap and popular, and «<> was still solid. In this collection, by the way, is preserved Jiarham's admirable and gay "Temptations of St. Antony," which was a popular recitation in the days before popular recitation became a lost art. There arc literally scores of other good things. FASTING. Tho little book on Fasting comes to me from America by way of '\Vangamii. It is a sane little book of its kind. With some of the conclusions one may not agree, but most of the contentions are sound. It is a. pleasant book to read when one is in bed and literally abhorring the thought of food. It is quaintly splashed, too, with purely American talk; which is always diverting in a book that seriously pretends to be serious.

MAETERLINCK. j Maeterlinck, among unquestioned mas- 1 ters of literature still alive, is probably tho least known to the multitude of the English. He has been called tho Belgian Shakspero: which is absurd, because ho has wonderfully little in common with Shakspero, from whom he differs essentially in nearly all matters of his thought and" style. But Maeterlinck is a great writer, and M. Harry's charming little book comes from Paris to lind a warm welcome from at least one solitary reader in New Zealand. It is one of those intimate little books that they make surpassingly well in France. It illuminates by flashes and reveals by suggestion. There are facsimile pages of Maeterlinck manuscript. There are several very charming photographs of the beautiful creature who was Mile. Georgette _ Loblanc before she became Maeterlinck's very charming wife. A most comely and fragrant little book to have about tho room just now. AN AUSTRALIAN SINGER. Mrs Forrest's book is ;tho pleasantest any Australian woman-writer has given us'during recent years. Thc're are slovenly passages hero and there, there arc lines ihat do not scan here and there, and here and there are lines that jar most dreadfully. All the same, the bookis fresh and delightful. Take this as a specimen of the lady's charm and manPEGGY'S EYES. Would you see the lakes of Scotland, the bi-aw lakes of Scotland, Deep and blue and wonderful as drowned blue skies, Where heather-footed mountains smile? Then comes with me and gaze awhile In Peggy's eyes. And would you see the kind heart, the fond heart; and the leal heart; Where betwixt dark lashes the captured sunshine lies. Where roses riot in her face? Then come with me and gazo a space In Peggy's eyes. FIONA MACLEOD. "The Winged Destiny" has a sub-title. "Studies in the- Spiritual History of the Gael." and it is probably the most beautiful'book of the bunch. There is an indescribable whispering fascination 111 every page of it. A truly remarkable man* was William Sharp, and he wrote some of his books in a woman's name — so well and so -deftly that many folks never suspected the relationship. A characteristic passage: — Another time I- asked him why he had never married. "There is only one Jove." he said simply, "and that 1 gave to tho woman .of my love. But she died of a fever when 1 was down with it. too. That was in Skye. When I got up, my heart was in her grave. I would bu" very young, (hen; but I had too much love put away. And then," he added, with a smile halfwliinioical, half whistful. "to marry a woman for comfort, or for peace is only for those who haven't the way of the one ot the power to make the other."If you want a .beautiful boo]; to be a permanent and cherished possession, get this one. R. L. S What a joy he is, our Stevenson ! Whenever I have finished a full reading of his books, 1 lind there is only one thing to be done; which, is to begin reading them all over again. I know all you can «3uy in criticism of his fiction. I know that his women, for instance, are the most pestilent little creatures imaginable, and that some of the men at od-.i moments might as well be crayfish. But hi-* fiction never fails to charm, simply because its exquisite style is appealing, compelling, altogether fascinating and delightful. I know that there are fools who say that style does not matter, or i.s at best but secondary, but with fools like thai, you and .1 happily have nothing in common. All Stevenson's essays are admirable, and the nobility of their style is unsurpassed in modern literature. What a splendid passage is here: —

What a monstrous spect.ro is this man, the disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, ffrov) in;:, bringing forth email copies ot himself; grown upon with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his face; a thing to set. children screaming;—and yet looked at known, as his follows know him, how surprising arc his attributes I Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so jviaijy hardships, filled vvHh desires so incommensurate and so inconsistent, savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremidiably condemned to prey upon his fellow lives, who should have blamed him had he been pf a piece with his destiny and a being merely barbarous? And we look and behold him instead filled with imperfect virtues; infinitely childish, often admirably valiant, often touchingly kind; sitting down, amidst his momentary !ife, to debate of right and wrong and the attributes of the deity; rising up to do battle for an egg or <lio for an idea; singling out his friends and his mate with cordial affection; bringing forth in pain, roaring with long-suffer-ing solicitude, his young/ To touch the heart of his mystery, wo find in him one thought, strange to tho point of lunacy: the thought of -duty; the thought of something owing to himself, to his neighbour, to his God: an ideai of decency, to which he would rise if it wore possible; a limit of shame, below which, if it be possible, he will not stooy. A CRYSTAL AGE. Here is a literary triumph of quite another kind, a book magnificently exquisite find pure. It was published ationymoudy in 1387, and won the unstinted commendation of great critics and thinkers; tout the great public would have nothing to do with it. and I don't think there was a second edition. One of tho looking-for.vard books, and far the best. Yon ;.ro carried on thousands of years, into a time when railways and electric appliances and every kind of modern convenience has passed from tho earth. There mc no cities and no towns. Men have returned to the patriarchal idea and live m families. The House is triumphant. 'The vast family house grows from year to year, from generation to generation. A man glories in his opportunity if he is permitted to spend his whole lifetime in perfecting the beauty of one room of the family house. Tho relations of tho sexes have altered in un amazing way. but I needn't go into that now. Hero i≤ a passage descriptive of the lirst girl encountered in this now age and country.

Her drcs-.e. if a garment so brief can be called a drees, showed n slaty blue pattern on a polo straw-coloured ground, while her stockings were darker shado? of the same colors. Her arms were entirely bare, and her leaf-shaped can was carried by tho stein in her hand. Her eyes, at the distance I stood from lie; , , appeared black, or nearly black, but when seen closely they proved to be green —a wonderfully pure tender sen-green ; and the others. I found, had eyes of tho same hue. • Her hair fell to'. her .shoulders; but it was very wavy or curly, and strayed in small tendril-like tresses over her neck, forehead, and cheeks: in colour it was golden black —that ie. black in shade, but when touched with sunlight every hair became a thread of shining red gold; and in some lights it looked like raven-black hair covered with golddust. As io her featnrw. the forehead wa> hreade: , and much lower, the nese larger, and Ihe lips more slender and curved than in our beautiful female types. The colour was also different, the delicately moulded lips being purpie-red instead of ihe approved cherry or coral hue;, while, tho complexion was a clear dark, and tho colour, which only .mantled the cheeks in moments of excitement, was terracotta rather than rose. A -very tempting young person, anyhow. BERANGER. This edition of Pcrangcr's songs is one of the best-loved of my books: There are five small volumes put into one delicious dumpy book, bound in full calf in the best French manner. It came to mo from an unnamed giver some consid- ; erablc time ago. and the only inscription

my anonymous donor honoured me with ; is"this: ''"They say. 'Happy who knows j you and happier who knows you not.' May that be an untruth!" I hope that is untrue, and though I am indifferent to most other folks' opinion of mo I confess that I should like this unnamed one | some day, somewhere, to bo convinced j of its untruth. I don't know why I should ho so extravagantly fond of the tiny book that comes to me with the suggested snarl of that inscription; but so it is. I have had lovelier and costlier Berangers; but I have let them go. This one. please God, I shall keep till I and my label pass far beyond sigfit and hearing of this little earth. MOPvRIS AND WHIBLEY. "News from .Nowhere" ie the most pleasantly expressed of all the books that attempt to sketch.a- possible Socialist paradise.- The book has tho true Arcadian atmosphere, even when it dis- . courses at great length of social problems and ancient grievances. "Nowhere" is one of I hose deligthfiilly impossible places that delightfully impossible people like you and I would love to spend some delightfully impossible future in. ""Mr Whibley's essays are stimulating and fine. Ho' is one of the few Englishmen now living who can grasp a person and a period and make them live again for modern men and women. A FORERUNNER, "Le Moycn de Parvenir" is now generally regarded as one of tho world's great books. All the wits of the earth have drawn their honey and their gall from it, since that far day when it was first published. It is marvellously gay, and utterly what you call improper. The characters' laugh 'so roundly at every opportunity and the slightest provocation that the laughter has carried over into tho book, and I have to keep it always downstairs in the den, Jest its chuckling keep mo awake on quiet nights. It is also a book of amazing wisdom. It often expresses in a phrase what many a dullard has failed to suggest in- a volume. Rabealis also, it may be remembered, was marvellously gay and utterly 'what you call improper, and Rabelais is secure of his place among the world's great dead. "Don't be too moral," Thoreau says somewhere; "you miss much life sol" I leave it to you. TWO POETS.

Verlnine was a saint confined in a very vile body. He was, let us say, the unwilling martyr of his worst impulses. In "Fonimos". 'all the mud that choked tho man finds vent. The verse is exquisite, as were all Vcrlaines' verses; but the matter ! Lord Alfred Douglas has been regarded as a sinner by the critical. But his recently published volume of sonucts is pure and quite delightful. There is no other man now living that can write English sonnets like these. They have all the true qualities of the sonnet. The young men who "compose" sonnets with amazing facility, and then loose the "sonnets" on a comparatively blameless world, would do well to get this little book: It would surely lead them to a divine despair. Lord Douglas's sonnets arc superb—no less. Here is one of a soimet-sequoncc addressed to Lady Douglas, who has hersejf written delicious verses. Vrhcn in dim dreams I trace the tangled maze Of tho old years that held and fashioned me, And to the sad assize of Memory From the wan roads and misty time-trod ways The timid ghosts of dead forgotten days Gather to hold their piteous colloquy. Chioilv my soul bemoans the lack of 'thee' And {hose lost seasons empty of thy praise. Yot surely thou wast, there when life was sweet (Wo walked knee-deep in flowers) and thou wast there When in dismay and sorrow and unrest. weak bruised hands and wounded bleeding feet. I fought with beasts and wrestled with despair And slept (how else?) upon thine unseen breast. And now enough of my bedside books. It has been delightful to talk to you about them, though there are few things else that could be delightful to me now. The sun is timid, threatened by black shadows; and it seems that some of the shadows have drifted across my soul. The wind howls shrill, and no birds sing; but in the quiet midway through last night 1 thought I heard 'a harpy sharpening her claws under my bed. I like not such fowl, even though I know they are only bred of these nervous qualms. My head as a drum that is beaten from within by all tho imps of Tophet. If I seem unconscionably long this time, you must pardon me. Just now, I hate to be alone.