ADDITIONS TO LIBRARY

Taranaki Daily News, 26 October 1935, Page 21 (Supplement)

ADDITIONS TO LIBRARY

THE OPEN ROAD IN AUSTRALIA. ROMANCE AND GRAVE TERRORS. The chief librarian of the New Plymouth Public Library reports the following books in popular demand:— General Literature. “Java Pageant,” H. W. Ponder. “Wild Career: My Crowded Years of Adventure in Russia and the Near East,” William J. Gibson. “Far Eastern Front: China and Japan,” ...Edgar Snow. “Don Fernando,” W. Somerset Maugham. “Pilgrims of the Wild,” Grey Owl. “Seven Pillars of Wisdom,” T. E. Lawrence. Fiction. “The House in Paris,” Elizabeth Bowen. “John o’ the Green,” Jeffery Farnol. “White Ladies,” Francis Brett Young. “Illyrian Spring,” Ann Bridge. “Susie’s Career,” Robert Hichens. “The Curtain Rises,” Hilda Vaughan. The following books have been added to the library recently:— “Blue Coast Caravan,” by F. D. Davison and B. Nicholls. (Angus and Robertson, Sydney). Four people, one of them a field naturalist, .another a journalist, and the two women-folk willing and able to share the labour as well as the fun of camping out, were unlikely to take an overland trip from Sydney to Cairns without obtaining some pleasant and interesting experiences. It is true that the “caravan” in which the journey was begun was abandoned at Maryborough for the more prosaic but less strenuous travel by railway train. Nevertheless the excursionists paid visits to islands and wayside places which added to their experiences, and of them and of the people they met “Blue Coast Caravan” is a pleasant and interesting description. The journey through New South Wales took them to scenes connected with the earliest days of European settlement in Australia, and some of the relics of those days were distinctly impressing. Here is a description of a convict-built church at Port Macquarie. “It is bare without and barn-like within . . ; There is a door through which the men in irons were marched under guard to their place in the gallery ,and outside which the red-jacketed sentries used to stand during the services . . . The interior is of lime-washed bricks, the pews are really pens. Each accommodates about six or seven persons, and is walled with cedar, to a height of about four feet six inches. A boy seated in one of the pews would be invisible, a woman’s bonnet might be seen, and a man, if he were sitting erect, would be visible from the beard upwards . . . Numbers of the congregation were requested to bring pieces of candle in their pockets. Along the fronts of some of the pews are to be seen sockets bored in the wood, to contain the stumps of the candles. The pulpit is 10 feet in the air . . . and has roughly the appearance of a wine glass : i >r/ I ”We'Wondered' ' wliat effect the presence of the convicts must have had upon the man in the pulpit . Perhaps he didn’t raise his eye to the gallery very often.” It was from the gallery of that church that an ex-convict looked down who survived experiences which “make the skin crawl.” It is not surprising that his references to divine service were cynical. The pictures drawn of the smaller Australian towns are as drab as they are truthful. Only one of them, Grafton, seemed to have responded to anything like the civic pride so noticeable in New Zealand communities. For the rest, they were ugly places for the transaction of business, often exceedingly selfsatisfied and quite unaware of their shortcomings. The average small farm homestead was equally dreary, although, there were some rare exceptions. The descriptions of scenery, of the light and shade to be met on the plains and in the hills, the delicate tracery of shadows in the open bush, and the

men. Not, that is to say, that they i were all “left lamenting” as in the old fashioned stories of heart-break. Two of them married, a third was happy in the choice of her mate, one found consolation or at all events sane occupation and hard work in the management of a poultry farm, and only one, the prettiest of them all, made a complete wreck of her career—for reasons that seem scarcely adequate. To become a woman of the streets as a protest against the ruin of a romance, and in spite of her family’s desire to help, seems rather far-fetched, especially for a young woman who had known the refinements as well as the inhibitions of upper-middle-class society. The unpleasantest of the five sisters is “Muriel” who marries a handsome parson, vicar of a slum parish. Outwardly Muriel achieved success. It is quite evident that she is not going to allow her husband to remain a slum vicar, but her influence upon his personality, her meannesses and hypocrisy in matters of sex make a distressing and extremely cynical story. Indeed that is not an untrue description of “Daughters of Albion” as a complete work. It is well written, there is not a slipshod description among the many characters introduced, there is subtlety in analysis, but there is such an absence of hope about the work as to leave a feeling of dissatisfaction when the long story ends. The constant appeal to sex as the only important factor in deciding conduct, thought and all other human relations may be considered wearisome special pleading or honest conviction according to the viewpoint of the readers but Mr. Brown has at least succeeded in keeping clear the purport of his story. He does not seem to give hope, however, that an amoral world will be any cheerier than the present, and there are occasions in the book when frankness in regard to affairs of sex is overdone. The principal characters had no ideals, no course to which •to set their lives, no compass to help them follow it. Was it any wonder that damage was inevitable? Improving Salesmanship.

Mr. Philip Masel has written an excellent booklet on salesmanship from the Australian standpoint. That is to say, one closely akin to that of the Dominion, and as the author says, his booklet “does not appeal to the ‘go-getter’” salesman. It does not think his methods reliable or desirable. Mr. Masel takes the case of retail, wholesale and specially salesmanship, shows the different problems each must face, and gives sound advice in regard to their solution. He also gives practical advice regarding the measurement of results achieved by any salesman. The booklet, published by Robertson and Mullens. Ltd., Melbourne, is one that can be recommended to all who are interested in modern salesmanship.

sombre grandeur of the heavy forest and ! jungle, is given with much discrimination and nicety of phrase. The roads in New South Wales and Southern Queensland had their bad spots, but from Brisbane - northwards the travellers were to learn what bad roads could really be like in early winter. They gave up the struggle, at Maryborough and finished the journey to Cairns by train. Before doing so a visit to Fraser Island and the aborigines’ settlement at Urangan introduced the caravaners to an Australia they had not known previously. Like any traveller in Australian bush they found the men and women who live “far from the madding crowd” are very likeable, very hospitable, and very philosophic over worries that make less unsophisticated people most unhappy. The gentleman in the bush who will ride miles to do a stranger a service may be a drunken nuisance after two or three days spent in "civilisation, but he and his mates are the salt of the earth wherever pioneering is still going on. . Townsville, the tropical city that m the design of its homes, or the lack of it, seems to defy any stranger to say it is hotter there than in Sydney; and Cairns, still further north, were more pleasant as centres from which excursions could be made than as places in which to sojourn. From Cairns the caravan party visited Barron Falls —which on Mount Egmont would scarcely attract attention —and a portion of the Barrier Reef. The Reef was a happy spot in which to spend the last weeks of the journey. The authors have preserved much of the interest and fragrance of their holiday trip in their record of it. In a much more pleasant way than that of the text-book they have given much information about “Australia Unlimited,” and in a manner that will give pleasure to those who must make their acquaintance with the highways and byways of the Commonwealth at second hand. "The Farm at Santa Fe,” by Laurence Kirk. (Heinemann, London). This is an unusual story. It begins with a description of English village life, with its inhibitions of social etiquette and the resentment of the village people against the “foreigner” who understands neither the local prejudices nor their strength. Fanny Verney was a daughter of the “Upper Ten” in a small town, and subject to the rules of her class. The reaction of the district to the man of wealth but little breeding is sketched very subtly, as is also the view of the self made man, who is, by the way, a decent and likeable character. It is through his influence that Fanny is given a chance to see something of the outside world. She accompanies the Wilkinsons on a pleasure trip to South America and at Rio de Janeiro meets an extraordinary young man with whom she falls in love. They decide to marry, but Fanny has first to return to England and overcome the opposition of her mother and her family to her marriage with an unknown individual of which Fanny can give them little information. She persists in returning to South America, however, and she and Keith Buchanan were married at Rio. Although she knew he was in charge of an experimental ■ farm, Fanny w3s aware of some mystery attaching to her husband’s occupation. It was not until the honeymoon was over and they were nearing the farm at Santa Fe that Keith told 'his wife that the farm was “really a kind of laboratory. Its—its a snake farm. We keep hundreds and hundreds of them. We make the serum that’s the antidote to snake-bites.” Fanny was distressed at the prospect of living at such an establishment, but more distressed at Keith’s want of confidence in her. It looked as though the romance might die before they reached Ganta Fe, but her common sense and affection enabled her to overcome the intermediate danger. At the farm she found other dangers awaiting her besides that of snake bites. She found that her arrival as Keith’s wife had upset the plans of his Brazilian assistant, Luiz, and his sister, Silva, who had hoped to become mistress of Keith’s establishment. The story of her fight against the mysterious dangers ends in a very dramatic incident, in which Fanny escapes death by a hair’s breadth and Luiz meets the fate he deserves.