IN THE LIBRARY

Northern Advocate, 13 June 1931, Page 7

IN THE LIBRARY

(BY “THE BOOKMAN.”)

dreamthorpe. (By Alexander .Smith.) One is pleased to see a new edition of Alexander Smith’s “Dreamthorpe” come from the press in stately guise. You may easily enough lind it still In the form of cheap reprints, which augurs well for its longevity, for these series rarely trouble to include works of which the demand is not by the thousand rather than by the hundred. Yet even so this little volume of essays, charming, simple, thoughtful, and of a soothing quiet, for the main part, which by some strange sympathy comes closer to the heart than to the intellect, deserves introduction to a generation which, may likely remember having heard the name of Alexander Smith, and little more.

Sometimes —I am not sure that it would not be correct to say .more often than not—the books destined to array themselves with the, relatively, few which we at once determine we cannot afford to give, to lend or to lose, reach us by what seems an unlooked for route. How often have we, one and another of. us, had the experience of a reading friend of mine. He had his own shelves of books, a hundred or more, and for others borrowed from a library. One wet, cold and miserable night, unable to pay an intended visit by reason of the weather, he was forced back upon the fare supplied by hie own volumes. ‘ ‘ What is there to read?” he asked his wife, just as one does ask sometimes, knowing well what the answer must and can only be. “You know; there are the books.” A little querilously, he strolled to his bookcase, ran -his eye over title after title, without feeling any attraction or any inclination to draw any one of them out and commence to read. Each had been read and reread, and the contents were all too fresh in mind, all that is save one, an old romance of the eighteen hundreds: you know those closely printed, small typed, yet wonderfully readable pages too, all things considered. It held the extreme place on the lowest row. No use; already, often, ho had glanced at it and put it back. The pages were many, and he had frequently told himself that if he commenced it, he would never have the patience to finish it. Its lengthy paragraphs looked too uninviting; how much more attractive were well spaced pages, with the sections broken into pleasing lengths. He again passed his glance from book to book; no, he knew them every one. Wretched night! to spoil one’s plans, and leave one stranded without so much as a book to read. Well, ran his thoughts, I cannot sit over the fire all the evening and do nothing, even with a pipe, ■u) here is for the only book 1 have noi read- In telling me this little incident he waxed quite enthusiastic. “The book I had rejected again and again is the most interesting on my shelves. For two or three weeks, until it was finished, in fact, I did not want to go out in the evening; all day long, in the irritations of business, 1 consoled myself with the prospect of three hours in the evening with my book; my wife complained that if the pictures or a visit to friends was suggested, I growled like a bear and insisted that I wanted to be left to my book.”

If I cannot say as much as this for my copy of “ Dreamthorpe” I may at least say that it rested, cold-shoulder-ed among other presentation copies, upon my shelves for some time before, in an idle moment, I commenced it. 1 had previously neglected it for others of my own choosing, and now found that I had scorned a pearl. Books that are written by authors to please and satisfy themselves and their own tastes, rather than those of an audience, are often preeminent. If internal evidence is reliable, “Dreamthorpe” was written to please Alexander Smith, and as a consequence has pleased many another since. Some may think it just a little dolorous, from his tendency to find his thoughts straying towards man’s last home, but he does so with such naturalness and simplicity, such a cheerful philosophy, that oue finds in it all a charm rather than any. sense of chill.

“An idle life I live in this place,” he tells us, after an introduction to the somnolent village which ' gives him his title, ‘‘at* the world counts it; hut then 1 have the satisfaction of differing from the world as to the meaning of idleness. A windmill twirling its arms all day is admirable only when there is corn to grind. Twirling its arms for the mere bar•en pleasure of twirling them, or for the sake of looking busy, does not deserve any rapturous paean of praise. I must be made happy after my own fashion, not after the fashion of other people. Here I can live as I please, here I can threw the reins on the neck of my whim. Here I play with my own thoughts; here I ripen for the grave. ’’

The more impressive, as it is the most grim among all these essays, bears for title: “A Lark’s Flight.” It is a. strange title for the matter of capital punishment and an execution, but there can lie but little doubt that Smith in relating an actual experience of his own, and no imaginative exercise of a dramatic vein. “And when, in the dead silence of thousands, the criminals stood beneath

the halters, an. incident occurred,

quite natural and slight in itself, but when taken in connection with the business then proceeding, eo unutterably tragic, so overwhelming in its pathetic suggestion of contrast, that the feeling of it has never departed, and never will. At the time, too, I speak of, I was very young; the world was like a die newly cut, whose every improesion is fresh and vivid.”

It was a brutal, cowardly murder for which these men suffered. It was decreed that the penalty should be ’inflicted at the place where the crime had been committed, the construction works of a new railway line, and therefore in the open country, “Be it remembered that the season was early May, that the day was fine, that the wheat-fields were clothing themselvee in the green of the young crop, and that around the scaffold, standing on a sunny mound, a Wide space was kept clear. When the men appeared beneath the beam, each, under his proper halter, there was a dead silence—every one was gazing too intently to whisper to his neighbour even. Just then, out of the grassy space at the foot of the scaffold, in the dead silence audible to all, a lark rose from the side of its nest, and went singing upward in its happy flight. 0 heaven! how did that song translate itself into dying ears? Did it bring, in one wild burning moment, father and mother, and poor Irish, cabin, and prayers said at bedtime, and the smell of turf fires, and innocent sweethearting, and rising and setting suns? . . . However, most of the contents of our volume are much more cheery, tighter, more placid. He loves to chat of books and their writers, and of gardens and the open air.

“In my garden I spend my days; in my library I spend my nights. My interests are divided between my geraniums and my books. With the flower I am in the present; with the book lam in the past. I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. 1 breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden’s rosea yet lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world’s first brood ■of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see (he Pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander; I feel the ground shake beneath the march of Cambyses. I sit as in a theatre—the stage is time, the [>lay is the play of the world. What a spectacle it is! What kingly pomp, what processions file past, what cities burn to heaven, what crowds of captives arc dragged at the chariotwheels of conquerors! I hiss, or cry “Bravo,” when the great actors come on the shaking stage. I am a Roman emperor when I look at a Roman coin. 1. lift Homer, and I about with Achilles in the trenches. ...”

“Books are the true Elysian fields, where the spirits of the dead converse; and into these fields a mortal may venture unappalled.”

Hero one might cull many interesting little, or lengthy, extracts—not aphorisms or subtle turns of, phrase to tickle the mind, but rather thoughts which help us to understand better him who writes them.

“If the Christian is less happy than the Pagan, and at times I think he is so, it arises from the reproach of the Christian’s unreaehed ideal, and from the stings of his liner and more scrupulous conseienee. His whole moral organisation is finer, and he must pay the noble penalty of finer organisations.” What think we of that? Is he correct in his suggestion, or is he wrong? Or this other passage? “There is scant danger that the rust of sloth will eat into the virtue of English steel. The English do the hard work and the travelling of the world. The least revolutionary nation of Europe, the one with the greatest temptations to stay at home, with the greatest faculty for work, with perhaps the sincerest regard for wealth, is also the most nomadic. How is this? It is because they are a nation of vagabonds; they have the “hungry heart” that one of their poets speaks about?”

Few ollicials, if any, in county cricket can equal the record of Mr. W, Newham, who this summer will celebrate his 50th year with Sussex either as a player, captain, secretary, or assistant secretary. He has played for England against Australia in Australia and he was a member of the Sussex side which “Ranji” captained 30 vears ago. Mr. Newham’s 50th year with Sussex will coincide with K. S. Duleepsinh.ji’s first season as captain of the county team. Mr. Newham, an amateur, came out here with Shrewsbury and Lillywhite’s team in 1887-8, the same season as Vernon’s team toured. In the New South Wales matches they struck C. T. B. Turner and .T. J, Ferris in wonderful form, and did not get among the runs to any extent. BETWEEN SEASONS’ BEAHTT HINT. Before winter starts in earnest, get your skin into form to withstand tho biting cold and wind. Q-tol Skin Emollient replaces natural oil; prevents chapping and wrinkling; refines and beautifies the complexion. Price 2/-; double size 3/6, Entirely N. 2.made and owned, 1