BOOK NOTICES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2437, 28 November 1900, Page 69

BOOK NOTICES.

#■ A SAILOR'S BRIDE. . By Guy Boothby. Melbourne: Ward, Lock, and Co. In " A Sailor's Bride " Mr Boothby offers his public another of those quickly recurring novels of his, concerning which one may say without ' asperity, -* One of them is very like another — yes, one of them is very like another." The slender &tory, cleared from its mass of good-natured and inconsequent "detail, is an episode in the life of Pliilip Dudley, navigating lieutenant of the Admirai's, flagship, Capetown. Meeting a certain beautiful Miss Erskine — one is always sure of the company of good and beautiful women in Mr Boothby's books^ — young Dudley makes - a .point of falling in love .with her at once. Incidentally he learns that his fair divinity has inherited millions from her father, 'and is visiting an uncle, Dr Lampion, at Capetown. We at once recognise that the doctor is to be the villain of the piece, and have no cause for disappointment.- Mr Boothby has not , conceived a mer-e --utter .villain L Philip Dudley being the son of an old friend of Admiral JRedfuwi, the bluff- old. sailor casts about for opportunities to give " the boy " time and space to distinguish . The capture of a* rascally old' slave- dealer, Achniet be^i Hassien, who is* known to be _ running, a cargo of guns and ammunition up the Shire River to Lake Nyassa, is the very thing. An • enterprise needing first a knowledge of Arabic, next an unusual amount of courage, and lastly a great amount of smartness, is an opportunity which, if the boy is worth his salt, he will jump at. He does jump at it, and within a very short time Philip Dudlej has left Mozambique, his skin stained, disguised in rags, and acting the part of a mad Arab, to join Achmet bee Hassien's crazy old dhow. At what juncture and under what circumstances Miss Erstine appears once more on the scene, and how the adventure of the slave dealer's attempted capture merged itself in another adventure in which the rescue of " The Sailor's Bride " was tne object of life and death, beguiles an hour or two as pleasantly as need be. - HEALTH AND CONDITION IN THE ACTIVE AND SEDENTARY. By Dr Yorke-Davies. London : Sampson Low, -vLarston, & Co. We cannot all of us lead an active life — as active at least as we could desire. Some of us must toil over desks, perched up on office stools or standing through „ weary hours. ' Some of_ us must pass our days or nights in such sedentary pursuits, amongst such enervating or unwholesome surroimdings that long before our time „ our •liver warns us that life is not worth living. Gout and indigestion -are a- formidable pair of ailments which loom threateningly before the; sedentary, while obesity is almost as bad. In the book under notice Dr YorkeDavies enters fully, simply,, and convincingly into " the dietetic cure "- of -all these evils. That the doctor's view of the. evils he treats of, and their cure, has been found •cfficaeiou's and successful, is evidenced by " the fact that within a period of two years four editions, numbering many thousands of copies of this work, have been ' Called for." Every year , science recognises more fully the enormous part that "diet plays in maintaming health and rendering drugs as unnecessary as disease, and it seems to us that a very -sensible contribution is made to the ' ethics of health by Dr YorkeDavies's little boojj. THE UTTERMOST FARTHING-. By Paul Newman-. London: William Blackwood and Sons. , This is an essentially realistic story : in ma^ ways startlingly and originally so, in the earlier parts especially. The story of two commercial men holding modestly comfortable positions in London business houses begins with " the Feud " which, after a friendship dating from their school •days in a little country .village, at middle life separates them, and substitutes instead a , rancorous hatred. Crofts and Medlett wgre essentially common-placeTmen. "There disl .not exist in the composition of either of the friends one single grain "of poetry, or romance. "Nor/ were! they cleyer men. "Of the two, perhaps Medlett was^thet brighter, . he certainly had ■ more self-confidence : on the other, hand Grofts had more perseverance' 'and more "ta-ste- for : reading." The two-men quarrel-over-a business transaction. Grofts takes to .drinking, and sinks in a suprisingly short time" to a pauper, dependent on the exertions of his children. Medlett is 'as .prosperous as his quondam friend is the reverse. Nora Crofts is the most prominent person in the book : the study of a naturally glever brain, and generous, self-sacrificing, woman's nature, warped and distorted by a tofeally false idea of the wrongs of her family. "Renunciation " finds the families of Crofts and Medlett — both the parental Crofts dead — on friendly terms once more, and Nora's adored brother Ted, to whom she had dedicated her .life, in lojve with Rose Medlett. Nora effaces herself yet again, -and in the sequel, " Reconciliation," finds her iiltimate happiness in the love of Oscar Medlett. The book is curiously uneven in merit j the sordid detail of the commonplace life and surroundings in the first part is instinct with ugly truth, but the after development of Nora Crofts strikes us as improbable, and the whole' sequence of events in the later portion of the book as unreal and inartistic. ; THE LOVE THAT LASTS. ' f _ By Eloee^ce Warden.. 'Melbourne : Ward, Lock, , & Co. . This is . a story • which is most amusing jrhere amusement is least intended — namely, m the' curious dialect and gaucheries of the well-born young Scotchman in whom the leader's sympathies should most warmly centre.. Whatever skill the' authoress may have •it certainly .does not lie on the portrayal of ■Scotch character, or the reproduction of Scotch dialect. The typical " Engleesh mees" of the French stage is not a more ludicrous, caricature than Fergus Roskeen, tke excellent younger son of the* old High-

land family of Roskeen? Alison Miles, an heiress moving in the best London society, is the heroine, and it is not too much, to say that she is equipped with sufficient graces of mind and person to suffice for the 1 equipment of half a dozen girls. Because he loves her, is wounded, and in that mysterious stage of convalescence when a man must not be thwarted, Alison consents to marry Sir Malcolm Roskeen, who is poor, reserved, and eccentric. The wedding day is full of strange surprises, including the frantic arrival of Fergus Roskeen, travelling post haste to stop the marriage and arriving — or where would the story be? — too late". The wedding night finds Sir Malcolm a professed lunatic, plunged in a temporary fit of madness from which, however, the übiquitous Fergus is on hand to protect Alison. " The love that lasts : ' has evidently not been one of Sir Malcolm's weaknesses, as varied and miscellaneous revelations of Ins former love affairs quickly unfold themselves to the unfortunate Alison. Between her moody, mad Lusband, his whisky-drinking and coarse-tongued relatives, and the pleasant vagaries of his former loves, Alison is to be pitied. Tragedy is. clearly inevitable, and its nature, together with- the exact relation of '• the love thatlasts " to all" that has gone before, may as well be left to tEe reader' who .desires to •launch -upon the manifold excitements and "complications of this veiy improbable story.