In An Easy Chair.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13892, 1 May 1909, Page 3 (Supplement)

In An Easy Chair.

BOOKS "AND WRITERS. Miss Margaret Cross in " A Question of Means," writes pleasantly. She designs to show us the effect on different temperaments of straitened circumstances, aiid the .difficulties of bringing up a large family on very narrow means. Charles Ollivant and Rose Marvell marry for love, but financial reasons compel them to set up their household gods in very modest style, and practically to leave that class- of society in which they have always been accustomed to move without becoming real members of any other, -l'roverty makes little difference; but Rachel, tied to the domestic hearth, and over-anxious, finds life more dilfienlt; and, brave aud unselfish (if a little hard and managing) as she is, she is often inclined to lose heart. _ Miss Cross also allows us to see the disillusioning effect produced on Rose's spirited and less selfish sister, by familiarity with the daily drudgery of the Ollivant menage. The characters are all well drawn so far as they go, but there is not" much subtlety about them, .and the author's outlook on life strikes, us occasionally as somewhat narrow.

In " The Stormy Petrel," Mrs L. T. Meade is rather more ambitious than is her wont. Her scene is laid in the South of Ireland in the middle forties of last century, that is to say, in the dark days of the potato. famine, when the whole country was converted by the " blight " into a scene of unspeakable desolation and misery. The author is successful enough in conveying the disturbed ' atmosphere of those unhappy days, and especially successful, we think, in presenting" one type "fcf English prejudice and ignorance in the character of Miss Isobel Johnson, the heroine's aunt, who cannot see why, when .potatoes fail, the natives should not'have recourse to bread and cheese, and even benefit by the change of diet As for the heroine herself, the spirited Kathleen o ? Hara, she is very charming, of." course, beloved by one and all, and overflowing- with the milk _of liuinan kindness. If she errs a little on the sids of over-seriousness, aud seems occasionally to take a little more on herself >than the circumstances seem quite to justify—as, for example, when she rushes away to London to tell an ahsentee landlord wluifc slifi thinks or lum we must remember that desperate diseases demand desperate remedies.

Miss Florence Warden's methods do not-grow less crude. The very young or very inexperienced novel-reader, however, may possibly be stirred 'to a faint /interest in the fate and adventures of Sir Moreeambe Crake, who is accused of .murdering "the low-born, drunken wife whom .lie had been foolish enough to marry secretly in his young Oxford days. Of course, when, after disappearing for eight years, Elsie turns up again to see what she can get; when Sir Moreeambe, to whose interest it i 3 to get rid of her, arranges to interview her at the Red Lion; and when she "accidentally shoots herself in his presence—things look pretty black agirist the baronet, more especially as Elsie's disreputable and . unscrupulous brother, who had viewed the whole scene through a window, is determined to swear that black is white in order to have his revenge on Sir Morecombe. The only other witness is the general servant *at the inn—a plain hut sentimental girl, .whose greatest ambition is to have a sweetheart. The brother then, has only to offer himself .to her in this capacity to win her to his side. Still, all might yet have been well had not the baronet—for very sufficient reason or rather for the all-sufficient reason'that. if he had stayed at home there would have been no story to tell—allowed himself to be persuaded to dis-c-uise himself as a chauffeur and run i away from the scene of his difficulties.

This year of notable anniversarres brings us the qiiater centenary of John Calvin. He was born on July 'O, 1509, at Noyon, in Picardy, ot a race who had been bargemen on the Oise—a hardv race" and God-fearing, such as has often been, drawn upon to do the great things of the world. The close of the fifteenth century, as Mr Irwin remarks in his very readable volume, "John Calvin: Ihe Man and Hi. Work " had seen the opening ot many new pages in the world's progress—the discovery of America by Columbus tor one -he development of printing tor another. Calvin himself was destined to be a light on the earth such a bright and shining light that we ask how different it might have been without him. He was as a human pillar in the road along which mankind is treading—a human milestone and more. Austere, narrow, if you like but h.ghsouled, a man whose head were in the heavens all that was John Calvin. Our author happily quotes, in description of him, word.-, which the Archbishop ot Armagh applied to Archbishop Temple: The iron heart to selr and not 1o others All his long life was given ; The heart of ilesli was lor h.s human brothers, The heart of lire for heaven. Yes the world will not pass over Calvin's quater-centenary, and n-ai.ers will find Mr Irwin's sketrli of lnnr popular in style and informed in all its facts. -