NEWS AND NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14109, 10 July 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

NEWS AND NOTES.

A "Memoir of the late General Redvers Buller,"' by Lewis Butler, appears in last month's Cornhill Magazine.

An old Worcester scale blue coffee-pot, beautifully painted with landscapes and exotic birds, was sold for £186 at Willis' Rooms, London, the other day.

Tne novel to succeed "Daphne" from the pen of Mrs. Humphrey Ward will have a Canadian background. It will be published by Messrs. Smith and Elder serially in the Cornhill Magazine in the autumn, and subsequently in book form.

The whole of the edition, consisting of 150,000 copies, of " Printers' Pie," were sold by the publisher to the booksellers and newsagents on the day of publication. Messrs. W. H. Smith and Sons' order was for 76,960. This constitutes a record first order" for any Is publication. * v

Some news notes about American authors and books: Mr. Robert W. Chalmers is writing a new novel, the title of which will shortly be announced. Mr. Irving Bacheller has written, named, and published a story of America in 1868, "The Hand-made Gentleman." Mr. Bliss Carman—who is a Canadian by birth, though he lives in the States— in a tent last summer and liked the experience so much that he is going to repeat it this summer. Across the Atlantic Mrs. Elinor Macartney Lane's story, "Katrine," which has only been out a little while here, has been winning much praise and many readers. There is pathos in the thought that the book has entered upon its life with the author passed away.

Mr. F. T. Bullen's new novel, " Cut Off from the World," is appearing in Unwin's Colonial Library. Mr. Bullen's hero is a silent strenuous youth, who chooses a sea career, and partly from necessity, finds himself throughout the most plastic years of his life literaly cut off from the world. His profession is his deity and love, and none of the usual pleasures of civilised man appeal to him. Then suddenly he strides into the position of rescuer of a great passenger steamship, and is compelled for the first time to take a prominent social position. The story traces his education in the ways of the world, and shows how love c ae to him, at first as tyranny and at last as peace. The story offers many opportunities for Mr. Bullen's remarkable powers of depicting life at sea.

Mr. Matthiw Maris, two of whose paintings bought by Mr. Justice Day for £420 brought £6500 at Christie's, is, says the London Evening News, one of the most romantic characters in London. While hie pictures have caused heavy bidding at Christie's, the painter, who sold them years ago, is living in two modest rooms that indicate nothing of the glory of his fame in the world. He has an income from .Hollanda email sum that keeps him comfortably—and in his obscure studio he still paints for his own pleasure, carina not the snap of a finger for the present money value of his masterpieces. If he had the thousands of pounds that the paintings fetched he would give them away instantly. He counts himself as happy as any millionaire, despite the austerity of his life.