BOOK NOTICES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2388, 7 December 1899, Page 61

BOOK NOTICES.

THE VIOLET FLAME. By Fred T. Jane. London : Ward, Lock, and Co.

In " The Violet Flame " Mr Jane works thi modern electrical development for all it is worthy and where reason fails he allows a lively imagination to carry the mind far be3'ond the realm of reason. The atomic theory and the unity of nature are both pressed into service to work out the author's weird conception. There is a school of scientists who believe that the primary condition of mattei is represented by hydrogen, and that under certain conditions all the so-called elements are resolvable into hydrogen. It is the embodiment of this conception that Mr Jane weaves iuto a story of thrilling interest. Professor Mirzarbeau has wrested from nature the secret whereby the" elements are firm-locked together in matter as we know it, and is enabled by a strange electric device -to resolve whatever he directs his destroying tube upon into its primary element, hydrogen. The display of the potent force he employs and can direct at will is manifested by a violet flame, the characteristic colour of the hydrogen spectrum in the spectroscope. The professor is a strange character, whom the populace consider a crank, until made to feel his awful power, and his assistant, Dornton is a study in human nature, with his sphinx-like character, Landry Baker, the American millionairess — la belle Americaine, as the professor terms her — -S a striking character, a new woman, with a burning desire to tread hitherto untredden paths. Consequently, she becomes a disciple of the professor, after visiting his laboratory, out of mere curiosity, in company with a young Englishman, Mr Lester, who has more than a passing regard for her. The professor asked her if she would like to learn what the earth thinks. " Would I? I just guess I would," she rqriied. " Only, p'raps you'll first flick off some of thi dust; this gown I'm wearing cost a mint of dolla\«." He shook his head. "I cannot do that even for you, mademoiselle. Thti dust is part of the machine ; it is the coiiductcr — everything." Then tl\e professor fixed a bell-shaped thing over her head, fastening' some of the wires in her hair. "I don't hear anything." she said. "Not a blessed sounl. What are you burning that purple-coloured light for? There'll be trouble with the Chinese by-and-bye. Unfix this show, professor; it don't work. It's a fraud ; I've heard nothing." • But the professor assured her that" he had burned no purple light, that, it was the earth's thought she -saw, and repealed. "Snakes!" she interrupted. "Switch off this old trumpet; it makes my head ache." Miss Baker carries her air of nonchalance throughout, and by her dauntless bearing vina more than the professor's respect. In the end the professor becomes imbued with the idea that he :.•> the. "Beast" of Revelation, and insists upon all his followers wearing the, '"mark of the Beast," a small disc which possesses the virtue of a charm against the all-destr)y-ing force he has called up from the profound depths of nature. Miss Baker's association with Mirzarbeau is actuated in the end more by fear than admiration, and with a woman's cunning she contrives to change the disc on the professor's forehead for one of the bogus discs he served out to rivals whom he desired to sweep from his path, and transfers the professor's disc ¥ -o the forehead of Lester. The result was that the professor fell a victim to his own powers of annihilation, but before lie died he had called up from the depths of space the violet flame that was to destroy the world. "About that time there came a strong crackling noise from the sky overhead, a tremendous roaring, and then, suddenly, a silence even more terrible, since one felt that this silence come only in that tbc. noise was of a tone too deep for humaa ears to tell. The clouds were flung apart as a man might fling hay, and beyond, above, and through them, infinite in form, infinite in size, darted strange shapes of violet flame, some driving swiftly downwards to the east, others soaring up to meet them. And when they met, there came a light so dazzling that I flung myself downwards in the mud, as did all the other people, crying vaguely that the sun himself was blackness before a light like this, which tore and ripped through protecting nands^ and seared one's eyeballs

through the flesh." But the disc of Mirzarbeau saved la belle Americaine and Mr Lester from the universal destruction, and they alone remained alive — a new Adam an I Eve — to start afresh a new world from amid the wreck, which will happen again in future eons. The story is creepy, and awe-inspiring, yet a human interest attaches to the pricipal actors. Mr Jane has at least broken new ground, and " The Violet- Flame " is certain to be read with avidity.

THE ROMANCE OF THE GREYSTONES. By H. Arxold Nelson. London : Ward, Lock, and Co.

A book of a different type. The people who flit across its pages are the ordinary kind Ox people one meets in with in everyday life. The romance consists in an English girl, Thekla Greystone, being married secretly to a Russian Prince, only to discover later on, as she thought, that she was sent to his castle to supplant his lawful wife. Being visited by that outraged personage while the cotint is detained at thi Russian Court, the bewildered English girl flees into the night to perish amid Russian snows. But she does not, perish ; she is rescued from the wolves that are gathering near by a party of English tourists, and left in safety at a wayside hoptelry. How the proud English girl nurses her shame, only to be confronted with it lime and again by the scheming Russian woman, is well told, and the interest is sustained throughout the book. Of course, the flight of Thekla was all a mistake ; the count was not married before, und only urged a secret marriage until the consent of his royal master had been obtained, and while Thekla is hiding herself away, first m England, next in Australia, the count is searching the world for her. I:i the end he finds her, and they live together happily ever afterwards. So far the author's conception is good enough ; but when he comes to deal with Thekla's pieces, what a world of topsy-turveydom it is he holds up to view. We venture the opinion that Mr Nelson's departure from real life in this connection mars the whole plot, and makes what would otherwise be a readable story a failure. That ordinary young girls, with average intelligence, should deliberately many men they do not, and nevei can, love, simply because the course of true 'love does not run smooth in their individual cases, is an outrage upon decency and right living. The book is not wanting in thrilling situations and startling incidents, buc the strange mix up of the marriage relationship of fehe sisters is bizarre, and presents a trr.vesty of that fervent love which the author tries to depict. The'u'tter heartlessness of Sir Noel Erringdean "deserting his blind wife, and on the evj of her becoming a mother, eloping with her sister, his first love, is a double out-, rage that leaves, somehow, a bitter taste in the mouth. But for this the book would bs good reading, although at times the author is pomewhat prolix.