A LITERARY LOG

Southland Times, Issue 22008, 6 May 1933, Page 11

A LITERARY LOG

CHASJNG A SAPPHIRE

Captain Michael D. Crowther, the captain of a steamer on the Irrawaddy, received from his Burmese wife a number of trinkets and a valuable sapphire, and promptly took them back to England with him leaving his wife lamenting him and her valuables. Four years in England was enough for him, and he decided to return to Burma to the “wife” and child he loved, but the woman has married a man of her own race, and Crowther, heart-broken, decides to become a Buddhist monk The jewels he gives to decorate a pagoda, the great blue sapphire being hung on the pinnacle. This is really the introductory portion of A. E. W, Mason’s thrilling story “The Sapphire, for though the reformed captain is very devout, some of the other monks in the monastry are not so sincere and they steal the gem. “Uncle Sunday, as the captain is known, declines to accept philosophically the loss of his property, and he sets himself to the task of recovering it. Mr Legatt, who tells the story, is on the staff of a Forest Company, and his financee, the charming Imogen Cloud, becomes involved in the trouble, for she wore the sapphire for a while without beinu aware at first of the terrible risk she ran. Their friends, Pamela Brayburn whose lively behaviour often proves rather embarrassing to Legatt, and Jil’ Leslie of the Semiramis Hotel arc caught up in the adventures of the jewel, which is stolen from Imogen by an Indian snake charmer and passes to the mistress of a wealthy young man from whom it is stolen by a rival actress before it returns to its rightful owner. The pursuit of the sapphire brings to the reader a series of exciting adventures —in various parts of the East, worthy of the most thrilling screen plays and Mr Mason makes them all as plausible as they are dramatic. If he had not been so successful in making his people appear alive the story would not be so gripping. Michael Crowther is an excellent characterization, but all of the people in the •book are well drawn, and the story races along at a brisk pace to its unexpected but satisfactory conclusion. Mr Mason’s hand has not lost any. of its cunning. “The Sapphire” by A. E. W. Mason (Messrs Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd., London.) UNDERSTAND THE SALES TAX Probably the biggest problem in connection with the Sales Tax is not how to pay it but when. This new taxing device is cumbersome and perplexing, and whether it be a temporary measure or a permanent part of the country’s commercial system the fact remains that its fearsome intricacies must be mastered by manufacturers, importers and wholesale people, as well as people who belong in part to the three categories. In fact no man knows when he will do something which will make him liable to this tax. From the moment the Bill appeared it was obvious that it was going to provide problems which no business man could hope to solve for himself. Mr Coates promised an official elucidation of the measure, but everyone should be pleased that the official brain has not undertaken the task. Instead it has been carried through by J. P. Kavanagh, the editor of the N.Z. Law Journal, and the Customs Department has been content to approve of the finished work. The result is a work on “Sales Tax Legislation,” which is really simple and comprehensive. The author, after explaining the general principles of the Sales Tax legislation, proceeds to set out for each class of business man the provisions of the Act which affect him, and then there are chapters dealing with the assessment of values, and the machinery which firms must use .in connection with registration, securities, penalties, appeals and a host of other implementary actions. Fortunately a number of examples are included as guides and these are a. further help in elucidating the mysteries. The text of the Act is included and the regulations to date, as well as a chapter on Sales Tax accounting, while a very full detailed index adds greatly to the usefulness of the work. Of course, addition to the regulations and amendments to the Act may come, but the value of Mr Kavanagh’s work will be increased, if anything, by these changes, because with it beside him the business man will be able to understand at once the effect of the alterations. I would say that every business man will breathe a sigh of relief the moment “Sales Tax Legislation” becomes part of his office equipment. “Sales Tax Legislation,” by J. P. Kavanagh (Messrs Butterworth and Co. Wellington, through Hyndman’s Ltd., Dee street). THE HIRED HUSBAND To erect an impassable barrier between herself and a married man with whom she had fallen in love, Roxane Sheridan, urged to protect the family name by her uncle, rejoicing in the name of Dickie Darling, decided to go through the form of marriage with some man who would accept marriage with her as a business arrangement. She found this man in Kirt Paton, a young Californian, who had been a Rhodes Scholar, and was now reduced to cheating at cards for a living. They were married and Paton took quite seriously the duty of saving the impulsive Roxane from making a fool of herself. This is the improbable situation of “Lady Gone Wild,” which provides the foundation of a brightly written novel by Phyllis Gordon Demarest. The reader does not need to be warned that after many misunderstandings these two young people will fall in love with each other and live happily for ever afterwards. There are no surprises in the story, and yet it dashes along brightly thanks to same lively, and,, at times,

frank dialogue which is quite in keeping with the extraordinary, incidents through w'hich is told Roxane s efforts to escape the vigilence of Paton and reach the married poet who has been the cause of her adoption of a paid husband. A very, readable, if’improbable story. “Lady Gone Wild ” by Phyllis Gordon Demarest (Messrs Mills and Boon Ltd., London)

ROLLED BY lOTA.

“The Sapphire” “Sales Tax Explained” “Lady Gone Wild.” “Health and Physique” I

BOOKS ON THE TABLE

(A. E. W. Mason). (J. P. Kavanagh). . (Phyllis G, Demarest). (Dr Y. Renfrew White).

THE WAY TO HEALTH There is quite a lengthy library of books intended to assist parents in the treatment and care of their children. Of course, it could not be otherwise in these days when one can find in books assistance for the solving of all problems, from first love to economic depression. But strangely enough, in spite of the number of books available for parents, there has always been a sense of something missing. Books which deal with the care and feeding of infants do not trouble themselves with the care and feeding of school children, and those which deal with the care and feeding seem content to leave the parent very much in the dark concerning the structure of the human body, to which they are devoting that care. There are books to assist the parent in looking after the moral up-bringing of their children; but these, again, do not seem to' make any effort to co-ordinate the mental and physical aspects of the case. I suspect that Dr. J. Renfrew White had something of this idea in mind when he wrote, “Your Children s Health and Physique,” for he has set out to provide parents with a comprehensive work, making them acquainted with the structure and the machinery of the body. Careful motorists know that they cannot give proper care to an engine while it remains to tnem a packet of mysteries. How much more necessary it is that all of us . should have an understanding, an intimate knowledge of the body, knowing how it works and why it works! This book is wholly non-technical. and it covers every part of the body, from skin to backbone, from scalp to sole. It is the natural development from the author s “The Growing Body,” a work designed to instruct teachers, and as it is very liberally illustrated, lucid and comprehensive, it should have a place on the bookshelves of every home; and it should be used, for not only can this book relieve parents of a great deal of anxiety, but it can, by providing them with a knowledge of the human body, greatly assist them in the care of their own health. The author has used the phrase, “your children’s” in the title; but as the child is the father to the man, it cannot fail to pay a man to learn and use for his own advantage the very' sound, unfaddist information that Dr. Renfrew White has supplied. “Your Children’s Health and Physique,” by J. Renfrew White, ChM., N.Z., F.R.C. (Messrs Couls, Somerville Wilkie, Ltd., Dunedin). THE PERIODICALS In the April issue of Life there appears a biographical sketch of President Franklin Roosevelt, with a brief survey of the problems facing him, and there is a further instalment of George Wirth’s autobiography, with its interesting recollections of circus life. Norman Campbell contributes “The Laughs Of Long Ago” recalling the vaudeville stars of the past. There is a goodly selection of light fiction and the regular departments dealing with current affairs are up to the high standard set by Life. My copy comes from the Fitchett Brothers Proprietary Ltd., Melbourne. LONDON’S TASTE In mid-March the books in greatest demand at London bookshops were:— Fiction. —A. E. W. Mason’s “The Sapphire” (Hodder and Stoughton); A. G. Macdonell’s “England, Their England” (Macmillan); Marguerite Sleen’s “Stallion” (Gollancz); Andrew Souter’s “Tomorrow is Yesterday” (Hutchinson). Miscellaneous—Captain von Rintelen’s “Dark Invader” (Lovat Dickson); Count Jean Louis D’Esque’s “A Count in the Fo’c’sle” (Hurst and Blackett); Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto’s “A Daughter of the Samurai” (Hurst and Blackett); Sir Arthur Eddington’s “The Expanding Universe” (Cambridge University Press 3. LAWRENCE ON HOMER “T. E. Shaw,” even better known as Colonel Lawrence has completed the twenty-eighth translation of Homer’s “Odyssey” mild English, and this time into robust prose; and in franker prose than Butcher and Lang, or Cowper or Palmer used. One instance I have noticed to prove this: The Cattle of the Sun were to Palmer “kine, crookhorned, and beautiful and broad of brow”; Butcher and Lang, called them “fairkine of shambling gait and broad of brew.” Lawrence sees them as “gorgeous, lurching-gaited, broadhorned beasts.” In his . “Translator s Note,” Lawrence has an interesting reference to Homer:

I found a bookworm, no longer young, living from home, a mainlander, city-bred and domestic. Married but not exclusively, a dog-lover, often hungry and thirsty, dark-hair-ed. Fond of poetry, a great ,if uncritical reader of the Illiad, with limited sensuous range but an . exact eyesight which gave him all his pictures. A lover of old bric-a-brac, though as muddled an antiquary as Walter Scott ... It is fun to compare his infuriating male condescension toward inglorious woman with his tender charity of head and heart for serving men. Though a stickler for the prides of poets and a man who never misses .a chance to cocker up their standing, yet he must be (like writers two thousand years after him) the associate of menials, making himself their friend and defender by understanding. Very bookish, this housebred man. His work smells of the literary coterie, of a writing tradition. His notebooks were stocked with pilrple passages, and he embedded these in his tale wherever they would more or

less fit. He, like William Morris, was driven by his age to legend, where he found men living untrammelled under the God-possessed skies. . . . Obviously the tale was the thing; and that explains (without excusing it to our ingrown minds) his thin and accidental characterization . . . Only the central family stands out, consistently and pitilessly drawn—the sly, cattish wife, that cold-blooded egotist Odysseus, and the priggish son who yet met his master-prig in Menelaus. It is sorrowful to believe that these were really Homer’s heroes and exemplars.

But after all in the “Odyssey,” it is the tale that counts. It is Europe’s first novel, still exciting to read.