IN BACK BLOCKS LIBRARY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2842, 2 September 1908, Page 85

IN BACK BLOCKS LIBRARY.

j By Dbtjmawhandie. I Our library burst into a vigorous baby- , hood some 13 yea-rs ago. The dominie , was the moving spirit, and the membership lists which were sent round soon bore the names of nearly - all the fullgrown residents. A cupboard was made and presented by an elderly bachelor member, and 150 books, composed almost entirely of works by unshakeable authors, such as Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, Lever, Marrj'att, Lytton, etc., ,vere promptly established on its shelves, their edges mathematically straight one with the other, and the authors arranged in strict alphabetical order. Some Ballantyr.es, Kingstons, and "Vernes were included for the rising generation, several odd volumes were thankiully received from friends who had no ace for them, and our library was launched, with all-round approval, into a sea of readers. These gift books were what the domi-nie-celector-librarian called " a rum lot " (it is na'rdly necessary to say that he was an Englishman). There was a droughty treatise on " The Philology of the English Tongue," which bears no marks of perusal even unto this day ; an ancient volume of Scottish history in old-fashioned type and no covers ; one of a series of , volumes chronicling the doings of Queen ' Catherine of Russia and her contemporaries ; a volume of Talmage's sermons, one of " Dick's Philosophy," an incomplete "Old Red Sandstone," a life of George Whitefield, Vol. VII of "The Decline and Fall," and various novels, mostly in that condition which is described by eecond-hand booksellers a>s " shabby." Our enthusiastic librarian left the district about a year afterwards, and from that time a gradual withdrawal of sup1 port by the public led to the library s condition becoming comatose. There was nothing 'surprising in that, as in 10 years the number of books had. been increased by less than 100. About three years ago, librarian No. 4 having left the honorary ; situation vacant, 1 took charge of the cupboard and the books. My first efforts lay in the direction of entaneHiig fresh subscribers. I met with ready help from most of the residents ; others urged as a reason for refusal the fact that it took them all their time to read the Witness. Ihis latter argument against suggested • membership became so common that it was quite a relief to 'hear a deep-voiced I young native rumble out, on his being asked somewhat irritably •. "Do you d-e-vour the Witness to that extent too, Bill?" "Oh, no! I just look at the picters an' the price o' rabbitskin.s. an' ' that does me ! " (It may be added that ' the young man with tlie artistic and commercial instincts is now a regular devourcr of Mrs Henry Wood and Co.). The subscription was fixed at what Mr Montagu Tieg would call "the lidiculously small amount " of 4s per year, and yet one man, of whom it may be said that his conversational failings leant towards candour's side, excused himself from joining on the ground that it was "too — • dear!" The books have now reached the respectable number of 700 — an addition of nearly 500 in three years, and though s scarcity of funds necestiti'ted most of them being novels, a fair equivalent for one's 4s can now be had. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said : " Even the foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on a se«a of wisdom: some of the wisdom wilJ get in anyhow." We have not a great number of members, and yet samples of many kinds of readers are to be found amongst them. There is, for instance, the lady reader who informs the librarian, in that sort of -tone which is coincident with a temporarily tilted nose, that she " can't stand Dickens ! " and who selects a couple by Annie Swan. Then there is the other lady who says, with a much-read air : "I dp love deep reading ; Jiat'e why I like Mrs Henry Wood : she always starts off with a mystery ! " We have also the reader who generally brings back the book tliat he got last, as he finds, after leading half of it, that he has read it before, j

We have the member who keeps up a] weekly consumption of about 10 volumes, - aud who pretty well exhausts your unread stock" in six months, with, as a [ counterpoise, the reader (?) who, in defi- , ance ot our not very strictly enforced | rules, persists in keeping & book for at j least half a year. Then we have' the ' member who brings back his books with their covers dimmed and slightly adhesive ; aud the one who, until be is fined i out of it, prefers, as being the handiest 1 way to hold a book, to bend it back I until it passes the breaking point, and becomes limp and unresisting. We have also the member who reads all sorts of books with the same tolerant approval. Ask him when he brings back a story on which you have felt justified in lavishing warm words of recommendation how he liked it ; he wiil reply, in the unbiassed tone which, he would apply alike to the exquisite humour of a " Rudder Grange " or the featureless oommon- ■ placeness of a "Jockey Jack": "Oh, right "nough ! " To the booklover, with his likes and dislikes, that kind of comment acts as an irritant. As a eonsoj lation for these various detrimentals, however, we have one or two rare examples of the reader who enjoys a good book and tells you so, who returns them regularly ■ and in » condition which is not altered for the worse, and who can tell at once the title, author, and -principal characters and scenes of any book he or she has ever read. As to the authors who are most widely read, a look at th« bookshelves shows Mrs Henry Wood, Annie Swan, and Mks Braddon to be in a rather more dilapidated state than any others, with Joseph, Hocking, Hawley Smart, and Rolf Boldrewood well up. Although most people when asked to name their half-dozen favourite authors would put Scott and Dickens at the top of the list, it is a fact that when you oast your eye over the shelves the books in the best condition are iindoubtedly those of .Jie masters named. More especially is this the case with Sir Walter. When I was''restacking the superfluities on the iluortevel shelf the other day 1 felt almost indignant when brushing olf the cobwebs which linked " Guy Mannering" to "David Copperfield " to think that numbers o* people have not yet been introduced to Dandie Dinmont and Meg Merrilies, and that they are quite unacquainted with the voluble and impecunious Micawber, the lovable Traddles, or that fine young woman, Agnes Wicktield — who, by fhe way, was far too good for the aggravating, doll-worshipping David. To these people the jovial Dick Swiveller and the broom - and - duster marchioness are strangers ; heroic Jeannie Deans and disappointed Dumbiedykes are unknown ; Bailie Nicol Jarvie and the Dougal Cratur, Vincent Crummies and Squeers, Quilp and Kit Nubbles, Mr " Sangsby " and the young man called Guppy, Balfour of Burleigh and -Jock Cuddie, Sairey Gamp and Mark Tapley, and the host of other immortals might as well never have been created. Cant has been well defined as " a thing that is true in itself, but not true for the person who utters it." There is a deal of that in book talk. Our people, like the oeople of other places, do not take to Meredith. Although his place amongst living novelists is acknowledged by the" cognoscenti to be at the top (that haG a Hibernian look), and though one cannot but be struck by th© pathos and the humour of a story like " Richard Feveril," it must be admitted that the charge of terminological ornamentation and roundaboutness brought against Meredith has much to back it up. Any one of his books to be unbrokenly understood and appreciated necessitates a knitting of the brows on the reader's part which is irksome and often unrewarded. As an illustration, just take the opening paragraph of the first book of his on which I can lay my hand. It is "One of Our Conquerors." Although the library , date on it is 1895, one decs not wonder 1 at the unsulliod appearance of its green limp cloth covers when one looks inside. What is apparently being described is a j temporary locs of equilibrium on the part j of a pedestrian. Meredith puts it this way : " A gentleman, noteworthy for a lively countenance and a waistcoat to match it, -Tossing London Bridge at noon i on a gusty April day, was almost maeiCiilly deluded from his conflict the gale by fome sly strip of slipperines";, , abounding in that conduit of the markets, wi-irh had more or ioss adroitly performed toe trick upon percediVg pa'-sencrers a:xl row laid this- one flat amid the shuffle of j feet, peaceful for the moment as the uncomplaining who have gone to Sabrina beneath the tides. He vas unhurt, quite sound, merely astomah-ed, he remarked ip reply to tho inquiries of tlie first kind helper at his elbow ; and it appeared an acceptable statement of his condition. He laughed, phook his coat-tails, smoothed | the back of his heed rather thoughtfully, thankfully receiver 1 his runaway hat, nc<Jded bright beams to right and left, and making liu;h' of the muddy stigmas imprinted by the pavement, he scattered another shower of his nods and smiles a round to signify that, as his good friends would wish, he thoroughly felt his legs and could walk unaided. And he was in the act of doing it, questioning the familial behind the waistcoat amazedly to tell him how such a misadventure could have occurred to him of all men, when a glance below his chin discomposed his outward face. 'Oli, confound the fellow !' he said with simple frankness, and was humorously ruffled, having seen absurd blots of snmtty knuckles distributed over the maiden waistcoat.' " There is something extraordinarily bright and sparkling about that, but it is just a little too elaborate for ordinary back-blocks taste. W« open the book at random, and our eye lights on this on ps^e 159 : ''That is the burning core of the question, our Armageddon in Morality-. Is she moral? Does she nean to be harmless? Is ehe not- untamable Old Nature? And when once on an equal footing with her lordly half, would not the spangled beauty, in a turn, like tie i

realistic transformation trick of a pantomime, show herself to be thai wanton old thing tbs empress of disorderliness? You have to recollect, as the Coneervative acub&ly suggests, that her timidities, at present urging her to support Establishments, pertain to hex state of dependence 1 . The party views of Conservatism are, must be, founded, we 6hould remember, on an intimate acquaintance jrith her in the situations where she is almost unrestrictedly free, and bei lavnghter rings to confirm'' the sentences of classical authors and Eastern 6ages. Conservatives know what they are about when they tb-

fuse to fling the last lattice of an ancient harem open to air and 1 sun. —the brutal dAspersens of mystery, which would despoil an ankle of its flying wink." That, quoted by itself, is slightly opaque, and although 1 reference to the context would probably serve -to clear up to some extent ihe doubt as to what he is driving at, there is sufficient evidence of intricacy of etyle about it to show why the book, although 13 years old, is as good as new. No books in the library have been more ■jvidely read 1 than the Sherlock Holmes series, Doyle's clear and vigorous style and splendid narrative power carrying him into ev-eryoni&'a favour. Charles Readc, Stanley Weyman, Clark Russell, and Eider Haggard, although neither of them is overburdened with humour, are also well worn; but Jane Austen, the Brontes, and George Eliot, who have enriched the world with 6uch fine books as ''Prid* and Prejudice," "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," "Jane Eyre," and "Adam Bade," are in comparatively bright condition. The strain of sadness in the works of George Gissing, Thos. Hardy, and Eden Philpotts is no doubt responsible for their failure to entirely jgaiji the favou 1- of our public, and although their stories are as literary mountains to the molehills of 3ye Queux, they are nevertheless worshipped with much tees- fervour^han are the last-named author's (speaking for myself, no book, with th« exception of "The Cloister and the Hearth," has ever gripped me with such intensity as Gissing's "Thyrza". The fairly obvious humour of Pett Ridge and W W. Jacobs is joyfully absorbed by our readers, but the less visible and more delicate variety of Richard Wbiteing and Frank Stockton is less valued, an/$ theii books are, aa the before-mentioned second-hand dealers would say, "as new."

Henry Kingeley is more soiigbt after than has brother Charles, most readers naturally finding '"Geoffrey Hamlyn" and "Ravemshoe" more palatable than "Alton Locke" and "Hereward the Wake" : while John Strange Winter nd Rita, Stewart

E White and Jack London, Guy Boothby ! and Louis Becke, Wilkie Collins and E. P. Roe, Dick Donovan, Nat Gould, Ouida, and Helen Mathers are about equally well patronised. Prompted by Old Country <. memories, I have with more or Jess difficulty procured a number of old-time favourites, and Carleton, Griffin, Warren, , Grant, Payn, Anthony Trollope, Ains- i worth, Miss Ferrier, Frances Trollope, and G. P. R. James are now waiting for the readers who seldom seek them. Where is tbe Teader of a generatior back who does not -remember "Two Horseman James"? ' "On a fine evening towards the latter end of the seventeenth century two horsemen might have been descending the hill at the foot of which reposes the village of Wotsisname. One, the elder of the two, was of fair complexion and massive frame ; while the other, of a slight though wiry build, was of dark, almost sallow, complexion, and of peculiarly distinguished appearance." How familial' i 6 the old opening! But his day is past, apparently. Speaking generally, brilliance of style, clever and witty dialogue, and searching delineation of character do not find such ardent support from the bulk of our readers as does something stirring In the plot line. There is notbmg like a good, tortuous plot. Any amount of love-mak-ing 'which doe 6 not proceed too smoothly, a stern father, a unorder or so, a chapter or two of court proceedings following on the arrest of/ a carnivore who has been perambulating -around in garments of unspun wool, a lost will, the search for which was ultimately rewarded, a mysterious burglary, and a breach of promise • case— -what G." R». Sime aptly caflfi "the imminent deadly breach," — a gipsy and a stolen heir, and_you have the materials for stories the covers of which, like the beggar in the nursery rhyme, are soon "all tattered and torn."

We have rules, all cut and. dried, but with that easy-going give-and-take disposition which ,is characteristic of backblocks folk, they are more honoured in. the breach than in the observance. Our member's fee is sometimes so elastic ac to cover^a whole family ; we been a book until it is convenient to send it back, and we are 'not all particular as to whether the fee is T>aid up to date or when it is a year overdue. We agree with George Eliot that "the fence of rules is for the purblind crowd," and we refuse to be hampered by it. The books have multiplied until they have overflown the original cupboard into everj corner of the houee; and notwithstanding that our rules provide for the issue of books on Saturday afternoons only, we endeavour, when tumbling over a stack of them in our hast© to serve a post-bedtime reader through the week, to work up as unhypocritical a grin as is possible. To those readers who' live at a distance, and who cannot oall for their books, we ate happy to write out lists and to wrap up parcels, which, by "the courtesy of the postanistresfi, are forwarded to all parts of the district per fetation mail bags, farmers' buggies, etc. Our money is not plentiful; but we spin it out by investing in sixpenny editions, which are bound in couples, and which, in that form, are handier to hold and very much cheaper than the Colonial Library editions. We also take the opportunity, when in town, to hunt up publisher's remainders and bargains of various sorts, and we manage, at a small outlay, to keep the supply up to the demand. The books are not bought by weight or for so much per cubic yaTd ; each is selected on its merits and with due regard for value received ; and altogether we can say, with conscious pride, that we are up to a thing or two in fife T>ack-&locks.