SELF-HELP.

Otago Witness, Issue 2668, 3 May 1905, Page 77

SELF-HELP.

By Samuel ShilesV

London: John Murray

The thanks and appreciation (purchasing appreciation) of the reading public are most certainly due to Mr Murray for the beautiful fiew edition of this excellent

old book. Among a large section of persons there is a vague prejudice against "Self-help." An immense number of middle-aged people of education, intelligence, and a fair amount of culture have never read the book : repelled by the title, and filled with an unspoken conviction that it is dull, prosy, and priggish. Never was there a greater mistake. The pages of "Self-help," if somewhat given to admonition and advice, teem with hundreds of good stories and apt anecdotes with which to drive home their author's sound and excellent advice.

But "Self-help" and Samuel Smiles! What a book it must be (and is) to have survived a combination of names inexcusable outside a comedy. The splendid print, wide margins, excellent poitraits, and cheerful outer dress of crimson and gold with which Mr Murray has endued our old friend should do much towards repopularising a book which at one time was a part of the mental equipment oi every conscientious aspirant to the title of "well read." There is something touching in the wording of the original 'preface, dated 1859, in which Mr Smiles d? scribes the raison d'etre of these essays, and in a few brief ' paragraphs tells of the little group of hard-working young men who, bent on mutual improvement by means of self-help, formed themselves into a, miniature club, and found the only roo-n they could hire for the limited means at their disposal was a dingy place once us<,r! as a temporary cholera hospital, and thereafter shunned as the personification of the plague itself. Nothing daunted, the self-helpers engaged the room, an i, waiting on Mr Smiles, asked him if ne would "come and talk to them a bit" in the long winter evenings. That was about 1846. In 1859 the notes of these "talks," added to by many an after experience and reflection, were first published, and proved so much appreciated that in 1866 a revised edition was brought out, and evoked a foreword from tne author, in which he. mentions with pardonable pride that the book has been reprinted in various forms in America, translations have appeared in Dutch and French, and others are preparing in German and Danish.

The present excellent edition, in effect, however, is the one which, nearly 40 years after, concerns us most intimately, and readers who desire a really attractive copy of a book which will never be out of date cannot do better than secure a copy of Mr Murray's 3s 6d edition.