BOOKS AND THEIR

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12063, 19 July 1917, Page 8

BOOKS AND THEIR

The In to Mr George S trust which secured the

heat-ion of that monume ''Dictionary of National Nat Gould is an auth exceed 10,000,000 copies, able that his new novel. " i in

or," will add considerably t<> these big figures. The manager of a. publishing house in London predicts that there will he no new books published after next October if the present, consumption of p:»per continues. Mr IT. G. Wells, in his new book, "God, the Invisible King," which Cassells publish, tells us that! his religious belief is not orthodox Christianity: it is not, indeed, Christianity at all, but its coro is a- profound belief in a personal and intimate God.

Tito "Life of Swinburne'' by Mr Gossc reached a, second edition withm a few weeks after its first publication bv Mcacmilla.n. It is a most encouraging sign that during th© distractions of tho war such «i. popular sale can be secured for n book of a purely literary interest-.

Sir J. M. Barrio recently wrote t-o Mrs Sara Coleman Porter, the widow of " O. Henry," stating: "T. om reading some of your late husband's hooks, nnd am captivaWl. If I had discovered him before his death I should have considered n trip to the United States well worth while to make his acquaintance." The recoiled ions and correspondence of the. late Major-General Sir Henry Halam Parr, K.C.8., C.H.G.. edited by Sir Charles Forte,snio-Brickclale. hart been published in London by Fisher Unwin. '' Opening with a glimpse of Rome, under the Papacy, touching on Eton and Sandhurst- and army life in the early sixties," Fisher Cnwin says, "these recollections go ou to unfold a panorama, of lifo and feeling during tho later growth of the British Empire. They show in turn the Cape under Sir Bartle Frere, Egypt- in tho days of Wolseley and Gordon. Spain. Morocco, India, and other parts of the. British Empire. A keen observer of men and thin J* <3, Sir Henry held many important. posts, where lie saw much that was worth seeing atid recorded his impressions in well chosen a.nd vivid language. His sympathetic and chivalrous personality gives to his recollections and correspondence a. lively and varied charm."

In her lately published reminiscences Lady Poore says thai, during her travels in the Mediterranean her husband, afte wards Admiral Poore, commanded the Hawke, which was torpedoed in tho early days of tho war. When the ship met her end she was an old, out-of-date craft, hut when Lady I'ooro knew her she was the smartest ship of the smartest squadron in the smartest service of the world Yet even the Tlawke had humiliating memories. During a ceremonial visit to the Riviera, when the public were invited on board, three ladies came, sat) down and deliberately ate their lunch. At last, they asked the officer on watch "when tho steamer was going to start." They had mistaken the Hawke, then the last: word in naval construction, for the little steamer that; plies between Villefranche and Mentone 1 Zabriskie Doty, whose book on conditions in Germany, which she visited in 1915 and again in the summer of 1916, has recently appeared, is a young lawyer of New York who attracted attention a fc-w years ago

a voluntary prisoner at. the women's penitentiary at Auburn. There, by - the way, she became a vehement convert to the theories of Thomas Mott Osborne as to the treatment of convicts. Miss Doty is of that- refreshing type of woman in whom a great ardour for reforms does not- kill the sense of humour. She has sufficient of this saving, salty ingredient of intellect to bear with equanimity the nickname, by which certain German papers now refer to her, " Snooping Madeleine." Ihi.s refined and witty title was bestowed upon her by a Cologne sheet, which ielt a justifiable resentment against her upon ■finding that the. severe search which she underwent, at the frontier, ou leaving Germany, had not effaced her mental picture of conditions in the unhappy country. One ean understand tho peevishness of the authorities who were so thorough in the matter of ripping seams, tearing linings, and using chemicals to bring out invisible writing, against a voung woman who was blameless of offence in nil material ways, and yet carried off evidence ineffaceable by any acid. What sort of impressions Miss Doty formed of the state of things prevailing in the Kaiser's dominions is indicated by the title of her book, " Short Rations." Although Camilla Flnmmarion recently celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday, lie remains one of the most romantic figures in French letters. It was he who re-established in France the cult of r.uii-worshin, the religion of ancient Persia, still surviving among the Farsees of Bombay. Each year, at. the time . of the summer solstice, he leads his followers out at. dawn to do obeisance 10 the "star of the day." Formerly this' rite was performed on the highestplatform of the Eiffel Tower, but. now that this has become one of the great wireless stations of the world, he and his disciples go elsewhere. There are many legends about this scientist, romancer and mystic. One of those, which M. Flammarien has never denied, has to do with a certain beautiful French lady, who presented to the astronomer his famous observatory ;n Juvisy, not. far from Pari?. There he and she studied the stars together: and she inspired, and he wrote, some of his most famous interstellar tales. She died a number of year.* ago. In h<-r testament, she left. 10 Flammnrion what h* so greatlv admired —the flawless skin of her hack. Ho weeeptrd the bequest and has it. f-t ill iu bis 'library, according to the tradition, as the binding of one of those very books "f which she was the inspiration;