The Author Disappeared.

Otago Witness, Issue 1915, 3 August 1888, Page 31

The Author Disappeared.

leaving behind him that position from which everything might have been hoped —all the caresses and delights of the present and all the brilliant promises of the future disappeared altogether.

Where had this raan 'of the world, this rising diplomat, this brilliant satirist, gone ? To a rural solitude in America ; to the life of a farm labourer ; to the bosom o£ a small strange religious community, collected together " to live the life " undei the absolute control of an obscure person whose followers believed him to bo supernaturally gifted. One of the tenets oC " the brotherhood " was that all was held [in common — everything individual in the shape of property or of predilections was given up. The leader of this devoted band exacted from his disciples a long probation and complete obedience, withdrawing them from all the natural surroundings of their position in order that they might prove the sincerity of the impulse which had brought them under his sway. In obedience to this requirement, Laurence Oliphant, in the heyday of his reputation, was changed suddenly into a farm labourer — a bad one, we have ourselves heard him say; not skilful at his new work, encountering mischances such as discouraged the enthusiasm of the social reformers in the " Monks of Thelema," but with no such easy retreat as was possible to these fictitious martyrs.

Mr Oliphant's career since has been a romance in many ways. .After a year or two of the drudgery and sordid labour which was his probation, he returned to the world as