BOOKS AND WRITERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19798, 19 November 1927, Page 7 (Supplement)

BOOKS AND WRITERS.

M The Man Hunters" (Hutchinson), by Melvill Davisson Post, is an investigation Sincl comparison of the methods employed in tracking criminals in his own country (America), Scotland Yard, and the Continent. To the author, Scotland .15'ard's methods appear crude, if direct; those of Paris diplomatic, those of Germany thorough, and those of Austria, scientitic. The crudity of The Yard is inferred from the fact that it tends to place reliance on a clue. It will not " believe that a criminal can be distinguished because his temperature rises when the crime is discussed before him, or that one can put a gauge on his wrist and determine his guilt by his quickening pulse." * * « * *

Nor will tho British detective, apparently believe that " the character of a suspect can be determined by the way he wears his hat—namely that the honest, pedantic man wears his hat squarely on his head; tho nimblo-witted and pleasant wears it slightly tipped; the frivolous wears it tipped at a greater angle; the extravagant, conceited and impudent wears the hat on the back of his head; while the pessimistic wears it pressed down on his forehead." An illustration of French methods with criminals is afforded by the Story of Raspail, an agitator who courted arrest for tho purpose of posing as a martyr. Tho Government, instead of arresting him, sent him a document confirming his appointment as a Chevalier of the .Legion of Honour. The result was that he was wholly ruined—as an agitator; the underworld could never bo made to believe that the honour paid him was pot compensation for treachery. 4** * * *

Tho latest book by that doyen of letters, Sir Edmund Gosso, is called " Leaves and Fruit," and is dedicated "in affectionate admiration" to Air. Lytton Strachey. in tho preface to this collection of essays the author says: " By dint of gazing interminably over the vast expanse of literature, I have gradually and unconsciously come to regard with equal interest all forms of passionate expression, whether grave or gay, profound or superficial. I ask of books only that they E'hoald be amusing, that is to say, competently enough executed to arrest an intelligent observer. My little essays on them are so many pieces of broken look-ing-glass held up to catch the figures and gestures of life as they pass by." . * * * ♦ *

There is something in a circus, or tales of circus life, which appeals to the small boy dormant but not dead in many an adult mind. So " Menageries, Circuses and Theatres" (Chapman Hall), by E. H. Bostock, is sure of a wide public. Taking a seat as it were, savs an English reviewer, in one of the gaily painted caravans in which he started his career, he lets you amble along the highways and byways, not only of this country, but of France and the colonies. You encounter a hundred and one experiences incidental to a menagerie—the horses sometimes bolting, the traction-engines which superseded them sometimes sinking to the axles in a wet patch;-the wild animals fighting each other in their dens or occasionally attacking a keeper. \ou meet midgets and giants, horses with fourteen feet-long tails, white mules, boxing kangaroos and so on, such a medley in fact as Noah himself never saw.

" Tho Life and Letters of C. F. Moberly Bell " (Richards) _by his daughter, contains many interesting stories of one who, as manager of ihe Times for 20 years, became almost a legend for power, craft and unscrupulous tyranny. 1 hough there is no truth in the fable of his foreign birth, ho was born in Alexandra where his father was partner in a firm of grain-dealers, and at 15 he started his career as a clerk in the same business. Though most assiduous at his desl/ his superabundant energy found an outlet in writing articles on Egyptian politics and by the age of 20 he had been appointed official corresinpondent of The Times. Becoming a man of weight and influence he was courted by Egyptian and British representatives, though his sturdy independence caused one Pasha, who had vainly tried to win his support, io coin the epigram, 11 fanfc souffrir pour avoir Bell." * * * * »

Finally, in 1890, Mr. Bell was summoned •lo London bv an invitation from one of the Walters—proprietors of The Times—to come over " for a few months to help in tho management of the paper—a job which lasted till his sudden death at his desk 21 years later! The Times was then in a bad way—he had a Herculean task in front cf him; but as Miss Bell shows ho faced it four-square and with an irrepressible vitality and enthusiasm. He became 11 the autocrat of Printing House Square " and a far more important person than the editor.

Lord Lascelles, who has written an introduction to Mr. Charles Simpson's monograph on some famous Yorkshire packs, entitled " Trencher and Kennel," to bo .published next month, is far more of a bookman than most people know. He has a fine library, says a writer in the Sunday Times, 'at Chesterfield House, •where he recently entertained some famous bibliographers, including the Duke of Portland.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus In the midnight and the , , • Christ save us all from a death like this On the Reef of Norman s Woe.

How manv of tho thousands of Victorian school children who learned to recite Longfellow's famous ballad, but will be shocked to hear that the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey have issued' a report which solemnly declares that, having made a survey of Gloucester Harbour, Mass., they can locate no remains of the Hesperus wreck on the reef, and that moreover there never was any l" Wreck of the Hesperus " except in the jnind of tho poet!