LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2975, 22 March 1911, Page 77

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICE. "The Emigrant Trail," by Geraldine Bonner. London: Hutchinson and Go. Dunedin: J. Braithwaite. (3s 6d, 2s 6d.) This is a telling picture of a great historical incident in tlie colonisation of the Far West. " The year was 1848, and the great California!! emigration was still 12 months distant. The flakes of gold had already been found in the race of Sutter's mill, and the thin scattering of men, which then made the population of California, had left their ploughs in the furrow, and their ships in the cove, and gone to the yellow rivers that drain the Sierra's mighty flanks. But the rest of the world knew nothing of this yet. They were not to hear till November, when a ship brought the news to £Jew York." Those already bound for California in May of that year knew it only as the recentlyacquired strip of territory that lay along the Pacific Coast —a place of perpetual sunshine, where the soil was rich and fertile and the climate soft, yet bracing. The pioneer blood sang " the call of the West" into many ears; and the eternal spell of the Unknown drew hundreds, though not yet thousands, along " The Emigrant Trail." This trail was already defined, winding like a serpent through the immensity of 2000 miles over vast prairies, mountains, rivers, deserts, until it finally reached the Promised Land. And these are the stages by which . Miss (?) Bonner takes her readers. The Indians called this trail "The Great Medicine Way of the Pale-faces," and regarded it with peculiar interest and respect. Sometimes the caravans were large, many emigrants joining together under the leadership of some well-known guide, seeking by union to minimise the dangers and difficulties of the long journeys. Sometimes the parties were small, and in the latter case speed was generally the object, their light waggons being drawn by horses or mules instead of the slow-moving oxen, which were the orthodox steeds of the huge "Prairie Schooner." It is with the individuals composing one of the smaller parties that the present story deals; so with Doctor Gillespie, his daughter Susan, their faithful servant and driver Daddy John, two young men—David Crystal and George Leffingwell, —and later on a third, Low Courrant, a mountain-man of great experience and primeval strength and passions. It is around these six that the story centres, though other emigrants occasionally cross the trail and make a deeper, or less deep, impression on their lives. The story, like all life, runs on two lines —an outer and an inner. The trail, the incidents of the trail, their physical effects on the men and women who.traverse it, and its deeper psychological effects on their inner lives and characters. The Doctor and Daddy John are men of ripe experience, their characters are already formed, the journey simply mellows and matures thsm on the same lines, but the four young people are still very much " in the making," and all the author's skill is brought to bear on that making. Leff soon wearies of the hardships and privations of the way. He turns back, and the story knows him no more. David is of sterner stuff. He is a beautiful character, a thinker, and a dreamer —a man of high ideals and lofty aspirations, with a touch of the artist temperament; a high, untested courage, better developed on the mental than the physical side ;—in short, a man of the towns rather than of he wilds. The long-continued physical strain ultimately proves too strong for him, and he becomes prostrate and helpless—a burden on his robuster mates. Courrant is of iron: he bends man and Nature to his will, but is ultimately conquered by the love of his true > mate and the voice of conscience. But it is in Susan Gillespie that the chief interest of the story centres. She starts on the six months' trail a spoiled child, and ends it—a woman: —" The trials of the trail, that would have dried the soul and broken the mettle of a girl whose womanhood was less rich, drew from hers the full measure of its strength. Every day had made her less a being of calculated, artificial reserve, of inculcated modesties, and not a human animal, governed by instincts that belonged to her age and sex. Her character was a logical growth, forced by the developing process of an environment with which it was in harmony, and in which she gradually lost every ingrafted and inherited modification that had united her with a world in which she was an exotic. . . . She was the primitive woman—a mechanism of ele* mental instincts, moving up an incline of progressive passions. The love of her father had filled her youth, and that gave way to the love of her mate, which in time would dim before the love of her child. Outside these phases of a governing prepossession—filial, conjugal, maternal- ho for a time knew nothing, fell nothing; and could see nothing. . . . Gradually j the shell of her self-engrossment cracked, and the call of a wider life came bo her. '

, . . The desire to live as an experiment in happiness, to extract from life all there was for her own enjoyment, left her. Slowly she began to see it as a vast concerted enterprise, in which she was called to play her part. The days when the world was made for her pleasure were over. The days had begun when she saw her obligation not alone to.the main and child who were port of her, but out and beyond these in the diminishing circles of existence that had never touched them. Her love that had met so generous a response, full measure, pressed down and running over, must now be paid out, without stipulation or recompense. Her vision widened to behold dimly descried horizons, limitless as the prairies of the emigrant trail; and she saw faintly how this unasked giving would transform a, grey and narrow world, as the desert's sunsets had done, to a thing of beauty and worth." The descriptions of the trail and its various incidents, the docor's illness and death, the tragic and comic happenings to the M'Murdo family, the life in the wilderness, the camps, the cooking, the loss of horses and the anxiety attending their recovery, alternate with fine pictures of the different places through which the trail goes. Sometimes traversing wide, open country like a map unrolled at their feet to a wide horizon, "where sky and earth fused in a golden haze," and no sound or motion broke the dream quiet, "vast, brooding, self-absorebd —a land of abundance and accomplishment " ; sometimes lost to sight amid rocks and boulders, where nothing is to be seen but giant mountains closing in on every side, oppressing the senses with utter loneliness and insignificance. Very . terrible were the desert experiences of suffocating, blinding heat *nd dust; scorching, shadowless, unending plains, and onoe, a lost trail, the actual want of water and the agonies of unslaked thirst. Here all the trappings of civilisation fell away, and the travellers were reduced to the bedrock of primitive emotion—the animal instincts, the desperate struggle for mere existence, the clutch at food and water, the morose, surly silence that was always on the verge of 'a. furious outbreak of unreasoning rage. Here in the desert, at the very worst moment of the journey, the news reaches them of the discovery of gold in the land to which they are going; and this news gives a stimulus to their exhausted energy, and introduces a new element of interest into their lives. "They were seized with the lust of it, and their attentive faces sharpened with the strain of the growing desire. They felt the onward urge to be up and doing, to get there and lav their hands on the waiting treasure."" The story deals with a big historical situation. It is wonderfully well handled with a broad sweep of imagination and a masterly attention to details. There is in it an epic quality which does justice to the great primitive forces portraved. It is a noticeably fine piece of work, with an ever-increasing, culminating interest, and should make a distinct mark in the literary world.

"The Mistress of Sbenstone." By Florence L. Barclay. New York : G. P. Putman's Sons. Melbourne: George Rocertson and Co. (Cloth, 3s 6d.) It is said that there are only two or three plots in the world, all others being variants of these. If this be so, certainly the knight errant theme is one of the three. In classic days we saw it as Perseus and Andromeda; later as the Knight and the persecuted Damsel. In modern versions the knight errant becomes an athlete of mind or body, and the dragon an incoming sea or other physical danger, or, may be, simnly greed lying in wait to pounce on the innocent. However it is managed, the woman is in mortal danger, and the man rescues her and takes her for his own. Miss Barclay has made good use of the old theme. Myra, Lady Ingleby, "the Mistress of Shenstone," falls asleep in a land-locked cove and Jim Airth rescues her from the incoming tide, makes her climb to a narrow ledge of rock, where they spend the short summer night in a wooing that is certainly not "long a-doing." The interest is emphasised by the fact that Myra is already a widow, whose soldier husband was killed in an Eastern skirmish owing to a mistaken order, and Jim Airth is the man who made " the mistake." When she learns this Myra refuses to have anything more to do with Jim, and when she relents he refuses to marry her. The plot is further complicated by the appearance of a valet who claims to be the resuscitated dead man. But this onlv brings the young people to their senses, and the wedding bells ring out very gaily. Many characters which appeared in that popular tale " The Rosary " take subordinate parts in " The Mistress of Shenstone " —particularly Jean Dalmain, the capable and devoted wife of the blind musician, Garth Dalmain ; and Deryck Brand, the clever doctor, who advises the rest cure which leads to Myra's meeting with Jim. There is an interesting example of telepathy between a man and a dog, which, however, wo may take as pure invention. Sir Michael Ingleby was devoted to a little dog named Peter, which he loved better than his wife. Peter became ill and restless at the hour when his master died, refused to eat or sleep, took the doctor's news of Michael's death with resignation, and died in a few hours. Peter's is a touching story and can be matched by many others too well authenticated to admit of doubt. To those who would rather be loved than love such devotion is all sufficing. Naturally their widows, when they have any, are not inconsolable. This incident is not without its bearing on the present tale and the character of the heroine. LITERARY NOTES. - The feature of the annual report of the Edinburgh Public Libraries is the great deoreas: in This decrease is found in all -■■-.libraries with one exception. Novel -reading seems to bo on the decline in other places as well as in Edin-

burgh, as the library reports of several important towns issued recently testify.

—lt is stated that Mrs Drew, Mr Gladstone's daughter, has in hand a Work which is likely to be of great interest to all ad,mirers of her illustrious father. Mrs -Drew was always intimately associated with Mr Gladstone. In the latter years of his life she acted as his private secretary, and she is said to have kept a record of the great statesman's table talk audi of incidents associated with his. daily life. This record, it is now understood, she is preparing for publication. told that an unsuspected posthumous work of Charles Dickens had come to light and was in the printer's hands, I firmly behove that I should wish to go on dying long enough to read it," so wtrites Wm. do Morgan in the. Mail. Anyhow, that is a good way of expressing a love of has work that has lasted through a lifetime, and a motive on the. surface—and why seek for others when these abound, as Betsy Trotwood said to Mr Wickfield— for expressing sympathy with any and every movement in hi 3 honour.

—Mr Laurie is bringing out shortly In Castle and Court House; being Reminiscences of Thirty Years, in Ireland, by Ramsay Colles. The book has not only a political interest, but has a gocdi deal to say in connection with the Young Ireland literary movement and the work of the Dublin University dons. The social hie in Dublin is painted with a racy pan witn many hitherto unpublished anecdotes anil letters. Mr Colles's correspondents included Count Tolstoy, Ernst Haeckel Matthew Arnold, A. C. SwmWne, William Morris, W. M. Rossetti, Edmund Gosse. Austin Dobsoii, Sir Leslie Stephen, Robert Browning, W. E. H. Lecky Andrew Lang. George Meredith, and Walt Whitman. The book is illustrated.

The profession of a "book appraiser in America would appear to be a remunera tive one. For the purpose, of insurance, a collector of rare books m New York recently employed an expert to appraise tea library. It included, a set of Gruikshankiana, various publications of the UroLier Society, and original editions of Thackeray, Lever, and. Stevenson, and the estimated value of the whole caane to about # fcio, OA> in our money. The appraiser sent in a bill for £9OO for his services. Payment was refused, and in the subsequent trial the sum of £7OO was awarded. This, again, was challenged as excessive, and the judge who heard the second suit has reduced the fee to £SOO, which is said to be calculated at the rate of £2£oo a year. But- perhaps an expert appraiser does not get a job ot this kind every day. One of the conclusions come to by Mr Putnam Weal©, in his work, "The Conflict of Colour," is that the watchword ctf European policy in the East must be ' China stronger than Japan," although how China is to be developed to that position is a problem. As regards India, has oheeriul prophecy is that, within a century, that empire will be lost to England, and ho makes the. odd suggestion that this disaster should! be discounted either by creating a federation of Indian States, or by granting autonomy to the provinces, "which," he says, "will make India assume something of the political appearance of South Ame-l-ioa, united by a sort of general concordat. ' Mr Weak does not picture a revival of the warring and oppression which preceded British rule. Instead of this, in his Utopian vision, India is to be the "free ally of her old mistress; all the present dislike of Englishmen is to evaporate as soon as the "undcr-dog" has recovered his bone; and a free India, "over-spilling" into Persia, is to hold the balance against a strong Turkey, expelled from Europe by Austria, but firmly seated in the Near. East. According to Mr Craiok, Dickens is the favourite author of the Canadian people. In every Canadian home which possesses a bookshelf copies of some of his novels are sure to be found. Of his novels, the most popular is probably "David Copperfield," with "The Old Curiosity Shop" and "Pickwick Papers" close seconds —at least, this is the experience of the Toronto Public Library, the largest and most representative institution of its kind in Canada. Next to Dickens, of the older novelists. Sir Walter Scott claims the favour of Canadian readers, and following him is Thackeray, but neither of them ranks nearly as high as Dickens. Canada, we are told, has really a good deal of loyalty for its own native authors. Ralph Connor commands a remarkable sale for his stories, and his publisher computes that there is at least one copy of his books in every Canadian home. Sir 'Gilbert Parker is regarded with a good deal of pride by his fellowcountrymen, who buy his books loyally. Robert, B. Knowles has quite an extensive following. Indeed, booksellers are no longer ashamed to refer to the Canadian origin of a book. They are coiming to realise l that the pride of Canadians in their country is beginning to embrace a pride in Canadian literature as well. The majority of readers who have enjoyed Theophile Gautier's fascinating romance, "Mademoiselle de Maupin," are probably unaware (says a writer in T. P.'s Weekly) that the heroine was a real person. The Mademoiselle de Maupin of real life was a singer at the opera, in Paris, at the end of the seventeenth century. She was the daughter of a man of somewhat humble extraction, engaged in secretarial work with the Count d'Armagnac; and whilst only a girl married a man named Maupin, employed in the province. With him she had lived but a few months, when she ran away with a French fencing master named Serane, under whose tuition she became an excellent swordswoman, _ Her first serious escapade occurred during a professional tour from Paris to Marseilles, jm which she as an actress took the part of a man. She gained the affections of the hair-brained daughter of a rich Marseilles (merchant, and, as & man, ran away with her. Being pursued, they took refuge in a convent, to escape from which_ she set the building on fire, and took the girl with her by force. The girl, however, eventually escaped from her deceiver, and returned to her parents. La Maupin was afterwards captured, but succeeded) in avoiding punishment. She went, attired as a man, to> a ball given by a prince of the blood. In that garb, apparently with the deliberate intention of provoking a quarrel, she insulted a fellow-guest, a woman, and was challenged by three different men* each of whom, when the consequent fight came on, she ran through the body, after which she returned to the ball. "Among Indian Rajahs and Ryots," there is a stoiy from the chapter on the Ameer of Afghanistan worth quoting. The Ameer was in Calcutta in 1907, and 1 at a dinner

party Lord Kitchener spoke to him of the three great divisions of the British nation. "I cmy&elf," said Lord Kitchener, "am an Englishman, and the Lieutenant-Governor, who is on my left, is a Scotsman. The Soots have a dress of their own. Probably," he added, as he noticed that I -was listening, "because it is economical, they only wear a cloth twisted round their loins, which they call a kilt." The Ameer looked across at me with a simile, and I said, I think that your Majesty has seen some of our Scottish regiments in th© north Of India." He replied,, "Yes, I have seen them. I like Scottish regiment®, and (turning to Lord Kitchener) "they do not wear kilts because they cannot afford trousers, but because the kilt leaves the kg freer and stronger for going up and down hills." I remarked, "Your Majesty and I being hill men understand one another. The Ameer laughed heartily, and with a very humorous glance at Lord Kitchener, added, "Wrong box, your Excellency." The men of Borneo with whom tradition has associated' the adjective "wild' are shown in a very human and attractive light in Mr E. H. Gomes's absorbing book, "Seventeen Years Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo." The custom of headrhuntinff which earned, them this charaoetr is fast dying out in Sarawak under the beneficent ride of Rajah Sir Charles Brooke, and few will regret its disappearance when they, read of the crimes into which young men have been led by the desire to appear brave in the eyes of their lady-loves. The following is an. instance:—"A young man in the Batang Lupa.r started by himself to seek a head from a neighbouring tribe. In a few days he came back with the desir«l prize. His relatives asked him how it he was able to get to the _ enemy's country and back in such a short time. He replied gravely that the spirits of the wood* bad assisted "hiim. About a _ month afterwards a headless trunk was discovered near one of their farms. It was found to be the body of his victim, an aged woman of his own tribe not very distantly related to himself!" But apart from the enjoyment of this barbarous custom _ and the now equally rare pleasure of going on the warpath, the Dyak is a simple, friendly soal, affectionate and grateful for kindness, .hospitable, just, and honest. The amiability of his disposition Mr Gomes, who worked as a missionary in the country, attributes in large measure to the sociable custom -thai prevails of a whole village, consisting of 20 or 30 families, living under one roof. All hia life long the Dyak goes in dread of evil spirits and! warnings conveyed by omens and dreams, but gradually under the wise rule and education revealed by Mr Gomes's book a new courage is dairaing, evidenced by the oalm reply of a "school" boy to the frightened cry of "Amtul Antul (A spirit! A spirit!)." "That's not a spirit, it's only a star with a tail." Political ais well as geographical can* siderations- bring within the Egyptian horizon Dr H. Karl W. Kumm's profusely illustrated, and! published by Constable, of his journey through the heart of Africa from the Bay of Benin to Khartoum. The expedition, which occupied rather over 13 months (October 27, 1903, to December 3,1909), was undertaken in cooperation with the Soudan United Mission, of which the raison d'etre is to counteract the Mohammedan advance in Central Africa by winning the pagan tribes to Christianity. This purpose had: imuch to do with Dr Kumm's route, by directing it as much as possible along the dividing line between paganism and Islam. The peril that h» fears is that the conversion of the pagan tribes of the Soudan to Mohammedanism will lead to Africa's becoming a Mohammedan continent, with all the possible consequences. So little alive does he consider European Governments to be to this peril that he finds German authorities directly extending Mohammedanism, as in Garaa, where the originally pagan children of the Freed Slaves' Home are taken ever* Friday to the Mosque, while. Christian missionaries have been discouraged from settling there. The expedition seems to have been admirably organised, and though much of it was conducted through unknown territory and. presumably hostile tribes, tha difficulties encountered were, in comparison with similar explorations, singularly few. None the less, African travel is still abundantly exciting under even less adventurous circumstances than Dr Kumm's. The value of the record is increased by unusually full vocabularies, tables of times: and distances, meteorological observations, numerous mapsi and, in short, everything that the specialist will want to know, over and above what the general reader will like to hear. A long life was not wasted upon Samuel Rogers. He died i:i 1855, at tin age of 92 and a little over; and no one--says Mr R. Ellis Roberts in his excellent studV—"Samuel Rogers and his. Circle" (Methuen)—-with the possible exception of Talleyrand, lived over a period of mora startling change, andl lived so near t.he centre of things, and made s>ueh good uso of his opportunities. Some of the- contrasts found within the span of his lifetime ,aro very piquant. He could: remember the heads of the rebels stuck upon a. pole aA Temple Bar. As a lad he saw ft cartful of girls, in dresses of various colours, on their way to be executed at Tyburn. He called upon Dr Johnson, though courage' failed hum before he entered the presence. Hj talked with General Oglethorpe, who had shot snipe in Conduit street. Cowper was a young man and Crabbe a boy in the year of his birth. He might have met Burns when he paid his first visit to Scotland. Yet the man who thus came gruesomely in touch with the Forty-five,'- and saw the executions after the Gordon Riots, and knew London (which he no doubt pronounced "Lonnon") a> a small town surrounded by villages, and was brought up on an English literature ruled by Classicism, nevertheless Jived to see Tennyson made Laureate, met Carlyle andl Ruskin, was intimate with Dickens, and: witnessed the whole change of manners illustrated by the disappearance of the fashionable custom of getting drunk after dinner. Mr Roberts does not take Rogers's poetry tco seriously. His distinctive gifts, he says, were a' caustic tongue and a capacity for friendship. "Ah, I've just been reading your play. So nice, young poetry!" he remarked, with a diabolical dig of emphasii on the "young," to Fanny Kernble. Whan she answered, "Now, Mr Rogers, what did I do to deserve that you should say that to me?" he took her affectionately by the chin, as if he had been her father. That is a characteristic example of his wit, if Mr Roberts is Sight about its being blunt with kindliness. The chapters on tihe poet's circle, or, rather, on a few particular figures in it, such as Byron, Fox, Sydney Smith, are especially excellent, because of the play of personal opinion and criticism, on a great variety of subjects, for which they givo the author occasion.

Xn London th© other day a very raro tract, giving an account of the colony of iVirgpnia to 1610, was eoid for £I2OO, to go tfo America. Another tract of 1616, ako |»latiiig to Virginia, realised £l2l.

I A well-known Tapanui man (says the Courier) is said to havo dodged his wedding day, fixed for a fortnight ago, when tho fair bride and her friends had everything J ready for the wedding feast.