LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3610, 22 May 1923, Page 62

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICES. “The Mallee Five and Other Verses." By Charles Henry Souter. Angus and Robertson, Sydney. (Per Messrs Stark, Princes street.) This is a volume of characteristic Australian verse, containing a large number of short pieces, specimen titles of which are ‘‘After Johnson's Dance,” ‘‘l!.xin, “Weii the W’eat Turns Brown,” “Watercartin ,’ “bold-up,” “Milkin’,” etc. The title piece, of four verses, sings the praises of a blazing fire of mallee wood. The logs are tough and hard to kindle, “like a friendship of the kind that comes to stay,’ but once they do burn they give more heat and last out longer than anv fuel known to town-dwellers. In „‘ he where the fires are most coal, There I can t a-bear to go and warm my feet! Spitting, fizzing things as hasn't got no soul, -filings as puffs out yaller smoke instead of neat. But at home, well, it is home when the a a , lee stumps a-burnin", And the even’s drawing chilly and the season s a-turning. The majority of the pieces, being deof'c’f't® of belonging to the lives V f f c^ to ° settlers and being usually put n, ?. u t h of one of them, are m are ri, <?*" ! a S ood ™»"v more Are in standard English. There are also * V V se f The author in a short wel t 6 ? tnat "hen these vcrse.se were ntten conditions in the South Austrian region, of which they are descriprecent" v" 6 Ver > r „ n dlffer t' nt from those of i Cnt , c ®-, J he single-furrow plough done k o’ l>e seen > much sowing was vester br, “ ldca ’ St > the drill and the harvester were on their trial, chemical cran"s e and "If 1 bv , on, - v a few so-called cranes, and the wheat crop in conse Jer'acre Ver ‘‘Wh “’’i eight to bushels ll ®', ''hen it is remembered that r days (say from 1890 to 1900) the °zh wh f t ranged from half a crown g „ ls 3d a bushel at the railwav sidings of The sLT 'f Under3tood wh '-‘ »o many v farmers were sold up, and wliv the feelings of the remainder were profoundly pessimistic.” \ f ev . i >_ f^c U e y “MMI S ™ eXpIa l ilied 1,1 the p.erpi ' , " is a dwarf eucalyptus he volume has a frontispiece portrait of the author. The dialect p* S a hv hm W ‘f ~g° " a f nd an eas >’ swinging mav Iw -in VerSe , from “Harvest Time may be an example; “IiSSS Xr joll,U ' dusty ; d wh<ir pler through slide at d n e g , aWS the Plank ’ s!ide •*»*. Sixty bushels for the bank; slide along. , ° f dJ ' e I’ ieces of thought aud -.entiment are very pleasing. "Remembrance may be quoted in full: Now I am dead, I would not have you come grave, SWeet sc^ted fleers my Amr’ \ n'T 1 them: ° ften have 1 stood And watched you pluck them in seme fragrant wood, But these are not the flowers I ]on°- for now. ° Go where the violets are, and the wild bees iium, And where the cowslips nod and foxgloves wave; There sit you down, and try to call to mind Some little thing I did you deemed kind, And 1 shall ieel your kiss upon my brow. Some spirited pieces commemorative of the Great War—“Anzac Day,” “The Tenth, and a translation of a poem by a Belgian poet—may be noted. Air Souter s book should please those acquainted with back-country life, whether in Australia or New Zealand, and all who enjoy verse that tells simply of real things and natural feelings. ‘The price is 6s. 1 The Wolf frail.” By Roger Pocock. Oxford ; Basil Blackwell. This novel is a strange medley of the realistic and the fantastic; the orutality of rough seafaring folk and adventures among Indians of the wild North-west aie mixed up with psychism, reincarnation, and diablerie. A list of previous fiction by the author is given on the JjHe page—“ Tales of Western Life,” The Arctic Night, ’ “A frontiersman’ (stated to be an autobiography), and a numoer more novels. The paper cover has a portrait of the author, and a biographical summary, from which it ap pears that he has had a career of varied adventure, giving him ample material for romantic tales. As a- boy he was on a training ship, he served in the Mounted Police, was disabled in the North-wes. rebellion of 1885, published his first boon at 21, was trader in the Rocky Mountains, war correspondent and missionary, seaman with Yokohama pirates, special correspondent, shopkeeper in a mining camp—all before he was 25. This may suffice to show the heterogeneous nature of his occupations without going further into the list; but we may add that he served in the Great War and wrote two of America’s “best sellers.” The cover pictures bears an equilateral triangle, which supposedly has a mystical signification. It frames a picture of a sailing ship tossing pn a stormy sea, while three figures representing chief actors in the story are singly placed on its sides. The story introduces a group of Eng lisli people—the landlord of a Tham is tavern for sailors, his brother, Janies Fright, a bargee, and the latter’s wife and son. Another chief actor must be no means be left out —the spirit of a brother of the innkeeper and bargee, who has been hanged, and who lays his death to the treachery of his brother James This

spirit’s vindictiveness accounts for the murder of James Fright and his wife, of which their son finds himself suspected. H e goes to sea on an American vessel, j and in America meets with manifold adventures in keeping with this introduc tion. The bargee’s murdered wife was a religious woman, a Quaker, a psychic, and gifted with the power to exorcise evil spirits, a power which she has used n her demoniac brother-in-law. Her son inherits her psychic faculty and her power of “dreaming true”—that is, of leading a separate life apart from that of the visible world, as is told of in Du Maurier’s “Peter Ibfcetson.” So from the troubles of his earthly lot Bill Fright escapes to another plane of existence. It is really his astral body—the human soul and spirit, clothed in a vesture of finer nature than mortal ifiesli and blood—which thus escapes. In this astral plane and perhaps in trances he recalls his many past lives, or rather various episodes of them. He has been a Roman soldier who assisted at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, a Scandinavian martyred by a. heathen king, and has lived many another earth life before he was Bill Fright, the rough bargee's son, and much like other rough sailors but for his psychic gift. Not much progress visible! With “Storm” (to use the name of his astral life) is united another personality—that of a girl, who in her latest earth life, belongs to an Indian tribe of the North-west. Many and varied are the adventures of “Storm” and Rain,” and at last through torture and death they reach secure haven in the astral world — apparently no more to return to earth. But the astral world is very like this, except that the astral body does not require food and drink, and hat consequently astral beings are under no necessity to labour. This is how another pair of lovers meet in the astral world : “She came across the pasture through the tall flowers, walked with a healthy stride, swinging a sunbonnet, a nut-brown lass, freckled, dimpled, laughing, shouting to him that greeting out of the lost years, ' Why. man, alive !’ ” He seized her to Iris breast, and if he did rumple her shirt-waist, he “didn’t give a damn, while he verified each dimple with a kiss,” etc. Very fairly in keeping with pictures ol the spirit-world accredited Dy Conrn Doyle, Sir Oliver Lodge, and other spiritualists of high repute. “On Emu Creek.” By Steele Rudd, author of ‘‘On Our Selection,” etc. N.S.W. Bookstall Company, Sydney. The numerous readers who have enjoyed Steele Rudd’s humorous presentments of Australian back-blocks life will welcome a new storv of the same class by him in popular form. This one tells of the ups and downs of a family named Duff, who leave the city to try their fortunes on an up-country farm. Duff, a civil servant, is retrenched by a- parsimonious Government, and determines to try something wholly new. So six months later he settles at Emu Creek, bringing with him his wife, three children, some furniture, “a. head empty of agricultural knowledge, and a pair of hands that had never done anything harder than roll a cigarette or wield a cricket bat.” But he is fortunate in having an admirable wife, practical and cheerful, who makes the best of things, whatever fortune brings. Duff has acquired his farm, a subdivision of a former run, from a syndicate on “easy terms”—payment in instalments extending over five years with interest at 7 per cent. It has been a splendid season for growth, and the grass is so high that neither man nor motor can be seen among it. Duff thinks fie has made a good bargain, and that all will be plain sailing. His wife is less sanguine. But after years of mingled good and ill fortune, with mistakes and mischanges, the Duffs win deserved prosperity. A splendid wheat harvest makes their position assured. Gazing on it they see in vista the past years of loss and failure, now overcome. “And in the years years that followed the days of the Dulls were days of joy and plenty ; were as the butterflies that drifted by and the flowers that garlanded the hills and . headlands.” The Duff family and the neighbours, including .the schoolmaster and his wayward scholars, figure in such varied humorous incidents as have pro- ' vided mirth in former books. Steele Rudd's characteristic humour is too well known and appreciated for there to be need to cite examples of it here. There are a number of appropriate illustrations by the usual Bookstall artist, Percy Lindsay, most of these showing Duff and other characters in predicaments humorous to the disinterested onlooker if not to the actors.