BOOKS.

Northern Advocate, 30 January 1939, Page 4

BOOKS.

By “Caxton ”

JUDGING by the number of recently published books Healing with the gaxfie of Contract Bridge, a revival of interest has marked the winter season at Horae, and is expected to show up in our coming winter season under the Southern Cross.

Culbertson's Self-Teacher is in growing demand already. Its full title indicates the difference between this, his latest, and the series of former books at much higher prices. It sells here at 5/6, and is described as “Culbertson's Own New Contract bridge Self Teacher: How to Bid and liaise, How to Lead and Play, Made Easy." 'Hie size is not very convenient, being about the shape and weight of a shil-' ling exercise book. This unhandy size is dictated by the copious pages of

illustrated “hands.” The idea is to

give the lesson, answer the “drill" * questions, and then, check your answer? by the correct play of the bands set out. Those who are using it considered it one of the best guides 'to the game they have studied. One may be permitted perhaps, to indulge in wondering whether it has anything to do with a sense of rivalry ih the genius of his wife for the same game. Mrs Josephine Culbertson has Recently published through the house of Faber, a't 6/- a comprehensive guide to the game entitled Contract Bridge for Beginners. It is announced as a work “by the World’s Greatest Bridge Teacher, who even taught Culbertson to play.” A New Zealand publication just out is Contract Bridge by J. Gordon Allard, who last year visited and gave demonstrations tin Auckland. 'sbis little work,,-in compact form for the pocket, or table, is by a “Culbertson Master Teacher,” and, of course, based on the 'Culbertson system. A feature at the close of each section is a blank spdee’for making your own notes, and pages 111 to 122, at the end, are also blank for notes.

Browsing Among Recent < ;•< ' ... ‘ Publications

..Beasley' (Lieut.-Col. H.M.) has also issued at 1/- Five-Suit Bridge. There are 48 pages for those who are interested in this new variation, and the publishers are De La Rue. Turning to the more disturbing subject of war, one will hardly feel, in 10 weeks’ time like quoting Browning, “Oh to be in England now that April’s come.” Mary Ellen Chase, a Professor of English Literature in the United States has written a charming book In England Now (Collins, 8/6). She feels the incomparable glory of an English spring as Shakespeare did;

By April the king-cups open in the marshes: the cowslips fill the meadows and ■‘ho hands of the, 1 country children; celandines blossow by the streams and ditches; and “lords and ladies" begin to stir under their canopies of green. Daffodils by thousands rake the place of crocuses along the Cambridge banks beneath the sweeping willows; ladies* smocks silver the fields everywhere, now. as by the Avon three centuries ago. The flat bulb lands of Lincolnshire, glowing with yellow, purple and scarlet beneath the pale sky. vie with Holland in their wealth and brightness. In the gardens of old cottages and of new council houses men and women dig in the evenings, which, now the time is changed, afford light until nine o'clock. There is literally no house, however mean,' without its wallflowers, tulips, forget-me-nots and pansies. Now the orchards and hillsides woodlands and spinneys and copses come into their own. Apples in Kent and Dorset arc white and crimson with bloom, heavy with ihe sound of bees: the blackthorn and wiki plum edge the fields everywhere with drifts of white; the spotless, pendant blossoms of

me cherry nans’ -smnciies with snow; the gorse blows in mounds of yellow on heath and moorland, and the early heather begins to show its first faint traces of violet Men now drink their evening ale and beer, not within the publichouse, but without, sitting with their pipes and mugs on benches beneath the sign of “The Blue Boar,” the “Black Duck,” or the “Green Man.” And those who think the English an unsentimental race have but to note how in

the hours between tea and supper lovers sit beneath the hedges, or later, with arms about each other's waists, staftt for the cinema, there to see the supplement, the comple-r ment, or the sonsummation of their own seasonal heart-stirrings. But there is spade at work, a harsh fearsome sound of men digging trenches in the city parks, and many men reach home too tired to their gardens for the overtime given to making machines and munitions of war.