LITERARY NOTES.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 3330, 12 January 1898, Page 1 (Supplement)

LITERARY NOTES.

0 - - 4V -- -- • WITH PAPER-KNIFE AND PEN. 3 1 1.-n. “In Koifar’e Tents,” by Henry 3 Fofon Morriman; u. “ The,;Rejavenation of ) Miss Semaphore,” by “iial Godfrey.” Mao- , millan’s Colonial Library. (Wellington: S. and W. Maokay.) ui.-v. “ Bushigrams,” by Qny Eoothby j IV. “ Pharisees, ” by A. Kevill Davies; v. “ Princess Sarah,” by John Strange Winter. (Ward, Look and Co.’s Colonial Library.l Mr Henry Sofcou Merriman’s new story, "In Kodar's Tents,” may not be equal, especially as to plot, to that fine novel. “The Sewers,” but the style is as crisp and as epigrammatic as ever, and there are some novel scenes and incidents, and some clover character drawing. The action of the story passes in Spain in the fifties, when the Carlists were ravaging the northern provinces. Tho hero, Frederick Conyngham, has a friend, Geoffrey Horner, a fine gentleman who plays at being a Chartist, and in this latter capacity kills the son of a famous lawyer and wealthy North Country magnate. Sir John PJeydoll. Horner is a married man, and to save his friend, Conyngham tacitly assumes responsibility for the crime and bolts to Spain, where he falls in love with the daughter of A Chrlstinist General and is forthwith engaged in a , series of startling adventures. Sir John , Pleydell, who follows him to Spain under . the impression he is on the track of his 1 son’s murderer, is at first his bitter enemy, ( but discovering by an ingenious device ; that Conyngham is really shielding someone else, is favourably struck by the young man’s courage and becomes his friend. , Conyngham has, however, to fight against ] the cowardly devices for his destruction of ' a Spanish political intriguer, and has some ( hairbreath escapes. With the help of Father Concha, a good parish priest with a genius for homely epigram, and a centra- ■, iandista, one Conception Vara, he outwits i his enemies, and the story ends happily , with his lovo being accepted by tho fair i Estella. A story replete with exciting in- i cident, With not a dull page in it; is i "In Kodar’s Tent,” and WB Ban heartily ( fecoiiunend it;

" Hal Godfrey ” is tho nom de plume of Mrs O’Connor Eccles, who, iu “The Rejuvenation of Miss Semaphore ” (n), appears bent on rivalling Mr Anstoy’s clever joke " Vice Versa.” Mrs Eccles frankly enough calls her story a “ farcical novel," and farcical, broadly farcical are the experiences of the unfortunate Augusta Semaphore and her younger sister Miss Prudence. Miss Augusta, who is “a tall, thin and rathor abid-looking woman of fifty-three” has long been in that forlorn state familiarly known as “ on the shelf." One day, an unfortunate day for her, she reads an advertisement of a certain “ Water of Youth,” tho drinking of which restores the old or middle-aged to thair original and presumably beauteous youth. The advertiser demands and receives a large sum, and the lady, who with her sister (ten years younger) is an inmate of a West End boardinghouse, carries the charm-ful bottle home with high expectations of marvellous results. Alas, she takes about five times the proper dose, and when her sister Prudence comes into her room the following morning she finds, instead of an acidulated spinster of fiftythree, a whining, weeping, monkey-like infant, infant in everything save age and mind. This horror the unhappy Miss Prudence has to keep secret from the inquisitive landlady and hoarders, and it is easy to imagine what ftlu dan be got out Of such a situation. Eventually tho “infant” is smuggled Out of the house aiid “put out to nurse." Suspicions, highly malicious, so far as the wretched PrUdence is concerned; are aroused, and the final scenes are enacted in a Police Court. Luckily for Miss Prudence, at the moment matters are beginning to wear a very awkward aspect for hpr the potion begins to lose its effect, and Miss Augusta begins her reincarnation or retransformation, this time from infant back to full-grown woman. We need not go into further details, stifHtie it to say that although fully up to its description of “ farcical novel,” the farce is so well done, the fun kept Up with stioh go, that “The Rejuvenation of Miss Semaphore” is practically one long laugh. Mrs Eccles writes well, and her descriptions Of the little jealousies and scandals attendant upon life in a boarding house society are exceptionally well done.”

We do not care so much for Mr Boothby’s short stories as for his prolonged efforts in fiction, such as "A Bid for Fortune,” “In Strange Company,” &0., but in his “Bushigrams ” (in.)—an ugly title—he has certainly turned out some very amusing and occasionally very dramatic sketches of colonial life. The sketches are not all of the bush, four or five of them dealing with vice-regal “society” life. In these Mr Booothby suggests a far-away sort of memory of one or two of Kipling’s “Plain Tales from the Hills,” even paraphrasing the well known: “ But that is another story.” He is much better in his sketches of up-country life. " Promotion,” a scene in the life of the telegraph operators on a far-back station on the transcontinental line, is very well done, not so well as Kipling’s "At the End of the Passage," but much in the same vein and with much of the same power. There is true tragedy in “ Till Death do Hs Part,” and good broad comedy in some of the others. All are very readable.

The main scenes of “Pharisees" (iv), a story by Mr Kevill Davies—a name that is new to us—take place in New York, but the heroine is a girl Of English parentage, the grandchild of an English millionaire. Nina Harwood’s father had been cut off without even the traditional shilling, for marrying against the paternal wishes, and dies a pauper in a dreary New York tenement, leaving his daughter, young and pretty, to battle alone against the dangers of the world. She is a brainy girl with lots of courage, and although in her struggle for employment and subsistence she is sorely tempted she holds fast to honesty and purity, and is eventually placed by a kindly police “captain” —anglice superintendent—in Charge of a newsvendor’s stall. Here she sells the papers and studies humanity until she meets a rich man who betrays her with a marriage wh'ioh is a mockery, for he already has a wife living. It seems to us rather a blot on the story that Nina, with all her shrewdness and natural delicacy, cannot see through the wiles of Paul Simms, with his blatant wealth and ostentatious display, and we lose sympathy With the heroine when she continues, knowing the facts, to live in illioitrelations'with Simms and palpably rejoicing in a life of extravagant luxury. When, however, her child is born dead, there is a revulsion of feeling, and she leaves Simms to take up her old news stall business. Eventually she leaves New York for London, when she is found to bo the heiress of her grandfather’s immense fortune. In london we find her in aristocratic society—of somewhat a London Journal type—and Simms’ wife having conveniently died and that gentleman having professed great repentance, Nina marries him and the curtain drops. The title of the story, which is well told, being full of incident and with some good character drawing, especially in the American scenes, iaapparently based upon the fact that Nina discovers in her days of poverty and distress that the world is full of 'Pharisees. Some of these she meets, such as a wealthy widow who “ donates ” —the Yankees never give, they always “ donate a thousand dollars to a mission to the Chinese, and refuses to assist a starving girl.

"John Strange Winter,” otherwise Mrs Stannard, once wrote some clever and amusing little stories of English military life —" Bootle’s Baby ” especially will be

remembered—and she has been writing stories ever since. We confess we cannot say much in praise of her “ Princess Sarah and Other Stories" (v.). The title story is very wishy-washy stuff, and some of the others are so slight in interest as to verge on attenuation. Mrs Stannard should follow the advice once, we believe, given her by Punch, viz., to “ stick to her sogers." Outside barrack life, and the escapades and flirtations of the gay young officers, she is not brilliant. C.W. in “ The N.Z. Mail.”