AMONG IHE BOOKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2842, 2 September 1908, Page 66

AMONG IHE BOOKS.

» "The Angel and the Author; and Others." By Jerome K. Jerome. London : T. Fisher Unwin (Colonial Edition). Those who take a delight in Jerome K. Jerome's humour will enjoy his latest book. It is not a story, as might be supposed, but a series of short, fugitive sketches, furnishing pleasant light reading. "The title of the book may be said to illustrate in brief the form of the author's humour. The angel and the author are the subjects of the first sketch, and the others are the other sketches. The volume is replete with quaint conceits and amusing stories, varied by common sense and interlarded with precepts compounded with a philosophy peculiar to Jerome. Probably the best idea of its contents and the good things in store for the reader is to give one or two extracts at random. Here is one story : A lady one evening at a' party drew me aside. The chief guest— a famous writer — had just arrived. "Tell me," she said — " I have so little time for reading — what has he done?" I was on the point of replying when an inveterate wag, who had overheard her, interposed between us. "The Cloister and the Hearth," he told her, "and ' Adam Bede.' " He happened to know the lady well. She has a good heart, but was ever muddle-headed. ' She thanked the wag with a smile, and I heard her later in the evening boring that literary lion with elongated praise of "The Cloister and the Hearth" and " Adam Bede." They were among the few books she had ever read, and talking about them came easily to her. ' She told me afterwards that she had found that man a charming man, DU t "Well," she laughed, "he has a good opinion of himself. He told me he considered both books among the finest in the English language." Here is another delightful bit which will appeal to travellers :—: — I I crossed once with an English lady from Boulogne to Folkestone. At Folkestone a little French girl — anxious about her train — asked us a simple ■ question. My companion replied to it with "an ease that astonished herself. The little French girl vanished^: my companion sighed. " It's so odd," said my companion, ' ' but I seem to know , quite a lot of French the moment I | get back to England." | And here is a sample of the philosophy in which the author indulges :—: — The truest philosopher I ever heard of was a woman. She was brought into the London Hospital, suffering

from a poisoned leg. - The house surgeon made a hurried examination. He was a man of blunt speech. "It will have to come off," j he told her. •'What, not all of it?" "The whole of it, I am sorry to say," growled the house surgeon. " Nothing else for it?" "No other chance for you whatever," 1 explained the house v surgeon. " Ah, I well, thank Gawd it's not my 'cad, j observed the lady/ And here is the quaint conceit at the close of the volume :—: — Maybe the bridegroom of the future will not say, " I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come," but " I have married a wife ; we will both » come." i _____^___ ' " The House of Curds." By Lady Trou? bridge. London : Hutchinson and Co*" Dunedin :J. Braithwaite. > * - v This is a readable • story, excellently told, of what is known as the " smart set." Lord Haddon, popularly known as " Bobby," is the principal male character in the novel. There is a certain charm about him, but he has an ineradicable moral taint: he is, in -fact, a. confirmed thief.' He marries a charming heiress .for the sake of her money. As she realises the truth and 1 the nature- of the man with' whom her fate is linked," her affection for him is changed to scorn and loathing. Then ' the husband becomes madly in love with his own wife. Mainly through the influence of a life-long friend, who has loved her for years, but desires,, above all things, her happiness she gives her husband chance after chance to reform. The moral taint on each occasion proves too strong. Then comes a tragedy, and, in the end the heroine is rewarded with the hapniness in life which at one period seemed never likely to arrive. How that comes about th« reader must learn for himself.