LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3249, 21 June 1916, Page 70

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICES. "The Mist Pool." By Cecil Adair. London: Stanley Paul and Co. (3s 6d, 2s 6r1.) Ihia is the story of a young man who. at the very commencement of his career, resigns name, fame, a high position, the love of an adoring family and a devoted friend, as well as the results of an exceptionally .successful academic period for a chivalrous, ideal, and never repents it: and also of an exceptionally beautiful and joyous girl, who grew from childhood to womanhood in a scented herb garden beside an ever-replenkhed "mist pool." It is like all the work of this graceful writer, full of idealism and of a half-understood mysticism. High up on the downs in many parts of England aire to be found dewponds, unfed by spring or runlet, and yet always filled with the purest water, evidently the work of man, and yet of such hoary antiquity that the wisest scientist has not been able to find any record of their construction, though .such has been sought with the greatest care. When the lands around a.ie parched and dry and the valley streams shrunk to a mere thread the dew-ponds, far up on the sun-scorched downs, are full to the brim —clear, cool, sparkling, and unruffled, "not depending upon those supplies of life and being that are seen, but filled mysteriously from.some unknown and unseen source, which docs not depend on outward conditions, but draws its supplies from some mysterious power within." This is surely one of Nature's many allegories ; and as such the author uses it with considerable effect. The delights of the herb garden itself are duly emphasised, together with the charm of • its ordered sweetness and poignant scents rilling the air for miles around with their subtle aroma, at once stimulating and life-giving; so that we are told that the men and women who work among flowers and herbs are " unusually healthy and long-lived, escaping all epidemics." But to become a really skilled herbalist, able to procure health-giving potions, salves, and lotions, far more than this is needed. It needs the healing hand, the touch, "the Gift," great and distinct as any other gift, " without which you cannot coax the magic from the herbs." None can explain this gift; but the fact remains. Time and again Hyla Hunter, the herbalist, tries to impart his secrets to others, so that they may be more widely used for the service of humanity. But it cannot be done. No one can prepare or mix the ingredients exactly in the right way, and

" these people generally return and abuse the master roundly for having put theni off with a parcel of rubbish." Yet a wandering gipsy i» able to succeed where learned chemists fail. This gift is hereditary. For. more than 300 years there has always been a Hyla Hunter at the famous herb garden, and a son to work with, as well as to inherit his gifts. But at the time of our story the Hunter of that day had no son, only a little daughter called, by a quaint conceit, Shyla, "as if that might be the feminine of Hyla." Far up in a hollow of the Sussex downs is to lie found the wonderful garden, the wide thatched, comfortable house, with its farm buildings and its long, cool laboratory, in which work the wise old herbalist and his young daughter, sifting, sorting, drying, pounding, distilling, mixing, and otherwise manipulating those rare gifts of root and stem, leaf and flower, fruit and seed, which they have the skill to choose and the patience to manipulate, learning, ever learning, from a thousand failures and incomplete successes, to make the work of each season more perfect than the preceding, never content with present results, but always seeking to do better. Here on a lovely evening, when summer joins hands with spring, comes a young man in a self-propelled caravan: containing all things needful for a bachelor existence. This young man plants his motor vehicle iii a handy circle of pines, and announces that he has come more than 2000 miles to consult the famous herbalist. He sits with Shyla beside the dew-pond, and watches its mysterious replenishment; he helps Hyla Hunter in the laboratory, bringing to him many rare plants and flowers, and little by little he enters into the life of'the herb garden, until he seems to become one with it and it with him, and, having made the great renunciation early in life, he is rewarded with the great peace, which is the portion of those who, ceasing to strive for material possessions and the prizes of the restless world of men, seek happiness in the quiet places of the earth and a closer study of the secrets of Nature, especially those which are for "the healing of the nations."

"Bobby Orde." By Stewart Edward White. London and New York: Hodder and Stoughton. (Cloth; Is net.) "Bobby Orde" is a delightful boy's book, in which the young hero is introduced to the hard, but fascinating, life of a worken and a sportsman in the Far West among those "Silent Places" of which Mr Stewart Edward White writes with such intimate knowledge and profound appreciation. Bobby is introduced to the riveiiimen, sees a boom, tries to venture on its slippery surface, and finds himself in deeper water than he expected. He tries fishing, and is disappointed with his catch; ho learns to handle an oar and a shot gun; lie goes skating .and sleighing : but one of his best and most valuable experiences is found in shooting wild fowl in the bitter winter dawn and sunset, when he is called upon to bear a hand in lifting out the decoys and replacing them in the boat: The night got darker and darker, the decoys heavier and heavier, the water colder and colder. " Pretty hard work?" inquired Mr Kmoaid at last. "Yes, sir," said Bobby miserably. " Why is it so haul ?" Bobby looked up in surprise. "Because the water is so cold, and

the decoys are so hard to lift over the edge," he answered presently. " No, it's not that." said Mr Kincaid. "It's you're thinking about how many more there are to do. If you're going to lie; a hunter, or anything else, you're going to have lots of cold work, and hard work, and disagreeable work to dn—things that you can't finish in a minute either, but may last all day or many .lays. If you get to thinking how long it is going to take, you'll find that you'll have a tough time, and probably the work won't be done very well either. Don't think of how much there is still to do : think of how much you've done. Then it'll surprise you how soon it will be finished." Again the same wise friend admonishes his young companion : "Always be a sportsman, whatever you do. A sportsman does things because he likes them —not for money, or to be famous, not even to win, although all these things may come to him, and it is quite right that he take them and enjoy them, only ho does not do the things for them,'but for the pleasure of doing. And a right man does not get pleasure in doing a thing if in any way he takes an unfair advantage of another. That's being a sportsman. And, _ after all, that's all I can teach you if we hunt together 20 years. Do you think you can remember that?" "Yes, sir," said Bobby soberly. Thus the boy's education progresses. He learns to be wary and cautious, observant and careful, hardy and patient, to look "all round " the subjects that attract him —"back, front, bottom, and side"; and, while book-learning is not neglected, eye and hand, mind and soul, are as surely trained as the intellect. I expect we shall hear more of Bobby Orde some day.