LITERATURE IN LOW LATITUDES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2722, 16 May 1906, Page 77

LITERATURE IN LOW LATITUDES.

By J. Y. B.

! (For the Witness.) The booklovei or bibliophile (bibliomaniac if you like) ij, certainly an adventurer. He is a sportsman with a keen eye for worthy game. There ie a sympathy between him and his quarry akin to thatexperienced by his outdoor brother. Some prefer the high roads of literature, others the by-ways, and it is in the book bypaths, as on the neglected! trails of -the forest, tha* one day we find a book or a boar worthy our steel.. A boar that for capers and confidences.turns our hunting ideals into < realities ; a book which so delights that we have no time to go into the due inanities >f literary criticism, a human document which must have been written with the soul-fingers of our spiritual double. I remember one day scraping among the literary .- litter that stocked an ambiguous-looking, basket in a very dilapidated secondhand* shop, when I came across a pamphlet — a pamphlet is a proverbial drug.-rin^ any market. I looked it over, and discovered that it was a sliw volume of verse bearing no" imprint, , no date, and^jtoii-in^ex.' '.jThe title, "Lines by "Ectington Furere," might hay* stood for anything in the .wajr of a first or last essay in publishing. There were about a, dozen sets of verses in the book, carelessly printed on inferior paper, the whole having the appearance of> being decidedly "home made." l The initial verses, entitled, "Defeat," can be quoted in full: — O what this written page? A dull retreat — An atom, of the rage, ' The soul, the heat! 0 what this written page? A dull retreat: 1 hide from Love's warm rage, And claim defeat. The verses are" all personal. Take, for instance, a few lines from "Desire": — I ask no gilded dream, No future bathed. in glory; But that to-day suns gleam, i And that my simple story Of life be pure — serene! This may, perhaps, be doggerel, but it is ceitainly a very worthy confession expressed in simple, but suitable, .terms. The book speaks of nothing ; it hardly gets beyond the music of the word, the airy elusive melodious song or I ciy of-, desire or regret. We find no joy ; ■ l-ut the bitter knowledge of sorrow seems too well understood. There is in the poet's own words (taken from a few lines of blank verse which. I cannot conciliate^ I A cloud of uncertaintjr^looming in all the ways th y e future hide's, f I

Or, again : . ' O, what are years but idle, careless themes, If they. teach not dear hearts to dearer grow?" And, a grave question — O what is hope — life Bold to bitter dreams? Only in one instance does our author play realist, and in that we see the same dread world weariness conspicuous vc all hie (or her) efforts. The lines occur in a rambling sonnet : Our street is always the same old grey, And I grow so tired 0= the neighbours' talk. The euphonious title "Edgington Furere," untrammelled with alliteration, has all the quaint suggestiveness of a pseudonym, -but it is quite out of place to go into details on such an impossible question. One thing is certain: Some few are kind, the rest — Self-centred, thoughtless egotists,— Careful in trifles, lost to larger things. „ Culled from an unambitious page of blank verse, proves that our author was not altogether happy in friendships — a patent of the life-literary.

— The area under deer now in Scotland amounts to nearly 3,000,000 acres.

—In Holland births, marriages, ,• anddeaths,. instead of being recorded in newspapers, are indicated T>y windmills. When a miller gets married he stops his- mill with the arms of the wheel' in a slanting position and with the sails unfurled. His friends and guests frequently do. likewise with their mills, in token of the ceremony. To indicate a birth the wheel is stopped, with the .arms "in a slanting positions out at a more acute angle than for a marriage, and with the two uppei sails unfurled. Should a miller die the sails of hie mill are all furled, and the wheel is turned round until the arms form an upright cross, in which position they are left until &fter the funeral has taken place.