LEISURE IN THE LIBRARY

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 2, Issue 6, 1 December 1923, Page 49

LEISURE IN THE LIBRARY

“The Eighth Wonder” “THE Eighth Wonder, and Other Stories.” By A. S. M. Hutchinson (Hodder and Stoughton, London; our copy from Arthur J. Harding, Auckland). In this interesting collection of short stories the author of “If Winter Comes” presents several admirable studies of life and love from an odd angle of reflective vision. As in all his books, Mr. Hutchinson exercises an originality that is distinctly his own, though it tends in familiar practice to become a little monotonous in its marked preference for whimsical philosophy and quaint characterisation. But for all that, “The Eighth Wonder” is a happy book, with more tenderness in its various themes, which are discussed in the true Hutchinsonian manner, the real Old Puzzlehead manner, indeed, than is to be found in most of the books which serve these days as current literature. “You probably could not say straight off what were the Seven Wonders of the World. Personally lam always sure of the Pyramids of Egypt, and sometimes have been able to add the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. I often with a flush of pride recall supplying, on one of my bright days, the Colossus of Rhodes; and I remember how profoundly stirred were the circles in which I move when, at a learned talk, a young woman of our company added the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. But further than that ! Still, what’s the odds? No one is any the better for knowing what were the Seven Wonders.” And there you have the atmosphere in which Edward Bryant, who hadn’t an idea of them, not even the Pyramids, not only discovered them all on a picture card in a packet of cigarettes while on the way to a meeting of the Excelsior Literary Society, where the Seven Wonders of the World were to be discussed, but made the much more astonishing and delightful discovery of the Eighth Wonder. And what was the Eighth Wonder that made the savant’s discourse on the Seven a very ordinary affair indeed? The Excelsior Literary Society had agreed to offer a prize of five guineas for the best essay on the Eighth Wonder of the World, and naturally Edward Bryant’s mind swung away into the rosy zone of competitive imagination. The Eighth Wonder? What could it be? Wireless? The turbine engine? The aeroplane? And then the lights went on and, “all of a sudden, hitting him with a shock, and holding him with a breathless catch, Edward saw the Eighth Wonder of the World seated over against him.” Need we envy him his joyful discovery? Not at all. There is no monopoly of the Eighth Wonder of the World, and it requires no Cook’s tour to find her anywhere and everywhere where men look for gentle loveliness and charm. “The Eighth Wonder is to be seen in every city throughout the civilised globe, whose stupendous of all wonders she is, and in every walk of life, high or low, except the very highbred, swagger ones (too frightening for me); but she is easiest (and loveliest) to recognise at about six o’clock in the evening in the cities when swarming out she comes from the business houses where she has been tied up into the streets where much I love to wander, and wandering, watch her bring her wonder to my eyes. “Yes, that is when their wonder is most patent, the wonder of the Eight Wonders of the World, when they come shining out from their grim prisons, poured from their doorways to the sombre pavements like brightly-coloured beads tipped from a box across a dullhued tablecloth; dispersed among and starred among the trudging crowds like fireflies lighting in vivid glints a forest. They all are lovely, every one, even those that in the loosest test would pass no beauty standards; lovely in their youth, lovely in their eager mien, lovely in their metamorphosis from parts of huge machines (the world’s work) to individual hopes and fears and loves (the world’s high holiday). They all are wonderful. There is, as out they come and shining home they go, no man they pass—not all your savants or your laurelledcan of his powers give to weariness what of their graces these can give; can of his brain or of his hands bequeath mankind what of their bodies these, its mothers preordained, maintaining it, bequeath it. All lovely, all wonderful; and loveliest and wondrous most that one, as often I have seen, who to a lover waiting there emerges, and goes to him and amidst all the thronging crowds raises her face to him and kisses him, and takes his arm, and turns along the crowded streets with him; and lo! no longer crowded, fretful, anxious are that lover’s ways, but Paradise. “The Eighth Wonder!” And later. “Hallo, Bryant, haven’t seen you for years. Do you remember me? I’m Gilray. By Jove, do you know, I believe the last time I saw you was two years ago at the Excelsior Literary Society when they put up a competition for the best essay on the Eighth Wonder of the World. I got the first prize, you know.” “By Jove,” said Edward, “you’re welcome to it, old man. I got the Eighth Wonder.”

“ Sweet Pepper ”

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“CWEET Pepper.” By Geoffrey Moss (Constable and Co., London; our copy from Arthur J. Harding, Auckland).

This is a first novel, and a remarkable first it is beyond all possible doubt whatever. Mr. Moss discusses with rare insight and completeness a problem of the first importance to women the world over, and touches broadly upon a mistaken solution of the enigma that is as old as sin. The story is told with amazing candour and sincerity, and it grips and holds the interest of the reader from beginning to the end of a fascinating narrative. The theme, to use the author's own exact description, is “a naughty, if rueful comedy,” in which the engaging personality of Jill Mordaunt, the heroine, an English girl demobilised in Hungary after the Armistice and left out of work without the moral courage to return to drab life in overcrowded England, is portrayed with illuminating frankness and sympathy. The spirit of Romance in a romantic land may seem to many readers to have been tainted with the sordidness of modern society, but it is a piece of life done to the quick. The charm of the tale is not so much in its detail, as in its backgroundwide horizons, sad and not so sad music, peasant girls by the old Danube, hectic life in cafes, a passionate people yearning for the lost freedom of a thousand years, and a charming English maid blundering into disillusionment.

The title of this engaging novel is the English translation of “pap' rika,” which is to the Hungarian what garlic is to the Italian. The stalls in open market-places are piled with scarlet pyramids of it, the sauces are vermilion with it. Cottages are hung with festoons of the dazzling flame-like fruit of it. Once tasted, its subtle fire can never be forgotten. Paprika—sweet pepper —is bound up for ever with Hungary and adventure —the adventures of Jill, who fell down the hill. Paprika, to be sure, is hot stuff.