BITS FROM THE NEW BOOKS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 3, 19 July 1911, Page 45

BITS FROM THE NEW BOOKS.

Conversational Wants. ‘•'Certain things which are perfectly clear to many people, such as politics, business, housekeeping, bridge, what to say when somelwidy says ‘Pleased to meet you,’ the difference between Chippendale and Sheraton, why you tap

cigarettes before lighting them, how inuch to give the waiter, what is the Fngadine, where is ] J verpool-street, and the meaning of words like ‘debentures,’ ‘artistic.’ and ‘referendum’—to name a few offhand—were by no means clear to us. People who know all about these things can’t imagine the abject humbug and coward a person who doesn’t is compelled to feel in the most ordinary con versation. or the comfort and gratitude he or she feels on discovering that somebody else is in the same boat. There is no bond like it.”—“Now.” by Charles Marriott. A Man's Ways. ‘‘A man will confide more to a woman who waits and listens than to a woman who presses and questions. “A man will sacrifice a great deal for a definite aim, whether it’s the conquest of an invention, or the conquest of an element, or the conquest of a woman.”—The Mountain of God, by E. S. Stevens. Mills and Boon. 6/. A Story of King Edward. “When King Edward, as Prince of Wales, went to Canada, his suite include.l Sir Henry Wentworth Acland. At a ball al Quebec a stranger of pleasant manners drifted into conversation with Sir Henry about the Prince’s characteristics. Subsequently he learned that the gentlemanly stranger was au American newspaper

man. Still later the Prince of Wales came down to breakfast one morning flourishing a copy of the • New York Herald.’ and saying. ‘Acland. I see that you think 1 am very amiable, but that I have not the brains of my brother Edinburgh.’ **■—The Reminiscences of Goldwin Smith, edited by Arnold Haultain. Macmillan and Co. Her Inconsistency. “All women arc the most deliciously inconsistent creatures. They are moved entirely by the emotions of the moment, and, if they tell you they have made up their minds to renounce the world and enter a convent, you may be sure they’ will be in your arms in Jialf-an-hour.”—“The Feet of the Years,” by John Dalison Hyde. Stanley Paul and Co. 6/-. Our Desires. “A desire satisfied Ls always replaced by yet a new desire.” —“The History of a. Soul,” by George Raffalovich. “The Equinox.” The Victorian Age. “It was a world whose literature and art were adjusted to the mental and moral level of the Sunday-school. It was a world in which selfishness was inculcated in a million sermons, and slander and persecution were reckoned as good works. It was a world in which blackmailing became a recognised profession. It was a world in which men sent sailors to be drowned in rotten ships, and built chapels with the proceeds. It was a world which overthrew kings and set up millionaire monopolists; which suppressed slavery and invented sweating ; which imposed a curfew on her at home, and sold opium abroad at the point of the bayonet. A great pirate

empire ravaged the seas, with a crucifix at the masthead, and stole pagan continents.” —“Lord Alistair’s Rebellion,” by Allen Upward. How to Be Youtlifud Thougli Old. “The secret of eternal youth is—not, to mind: to wear the best wig you can buy, and not pretend it is your own hair: to wear pretty’ clothes, especially suited to your years, sumptuous velvet and more sumptuous fur, like a portrait of an old lady* by Velasquez: never to brag of your age, but never to bo ashamed of it.”—‘‘Beyond These Voices,” by* M. E. Braddon. Hutchinson. G/-. A Startled Mistress. “In the early days in Tasmania, a Hobart lady had, as cook, a female convict who was very clever, but resented all interference with her duties. One time tho mistress, trying to exert authority, was met by’ a platform with just two planks in it. (1) Cook wouldn’t have anybody trapesing into her kitchen. (2) Tho trouble she had been transported for wat killing a man. Audited and found cor* reet; ami missis thereafter stayed in the parlour -with the door looked.” — Reminiscences, by H. Button. Cur Frc-cxlstencc. “My message is that there is some great truth in the idea of pre existence

—*i truth difficult to express—not to be identified with the guesses oi* re-incar-natihn and transmigration, which may be fanciful. We may not have been individuals before, but we are chips or fragments of a great, mass of mind, of spirit, and of and Belief, by Sir Oliver Lodge, Methuen and Co. Stories from Goldwin Smith. “Labouchere said that he did not object to Gladstone having aces up his sleeves; but he did object to his thinking that the Almighty had put them there.” “ ‘We are much better oft* than you are for a leader,’ said a Conservative Member of Parliament to a Liberal; ‘Ours is only an unprincipled scoundrel; yours is a dangerous lunatic.’ ” “Martin Routh, President of Magdalen, was never seen but in full canonicals of the fashion of last century. Somebody bet that he would show Routh without his canonicals, ami thought to win the bet by crying ‘Fire,’ of which Routh was horribly afraid, at the dead of night under his window. Routh at once appeared, in a great fright, but in full canonicals.”—Reminiscences, by Goldwin {Smith. Edited by Arnold Haultain. Macmillan. 10/ net. An Eccentric Marquis. “The Marquis of Waterford palinted the Melton toll bar a bright red, put aniseed on the hoofs of a parson’s horse, and hunted the terrified divine with bloodhounds. On another occasion he put a donkey into the bed of a stranger at an inn. He took a hunting-box in the shires, and amused himself with shooting out the eyes of the family portraits with a pistol. Tie smashed a very valuable French clock on the staircase at Crockford’s with a blow of his fist, and solemnly proposed to one of the first railway companies in Ireland to start two engines in opposite directions on the same line in order that he might witness the smash, for which he proposed pay. —Sporting Days and Sporting Mays, by Ralph Neville, 12/6 net. The Turk and His Wives. “Polygamy is not, as commonly supposed, the general rule' in the East. Statistics are unreliable, but it is said’ that less than live Turks in every hundred practise it. They are a poor nation for one thing, and whether, as Plautus said, two women are worse than one, they unquestionably are more expensive.”—Regilding the* Crescent bv F G. A Halo. Parents. “Parents who ‘live entirely for thejr children ’ are seldom good company for them.”—“Love and Marriage,” by Ellen Key. Putnam. 6/ net.

Caned By a King. r “ Frederick William I.’b methods were prompt, energetic, and exceedingly unpleasant. The Postmaster of Potsdam was one of the first to feel the weight of the royal cane." On his early morning constitutional he saw the night diligence from Hamburg drawn up in front of the post-house, while the travellers were vainly endeavouring by vigorous knocks to obtain admittance. The King forced

his way into the house, and himself belaboured the slothful postmaster in his bed, driving him into the street and out of office; he then turned to the travellers and humbly apologised to them for having kept them waiting, and for the laxity of Prussian officials.” —“ The House of Hohenzollern,” by I. A. Brayley Hodgetts. Methuen. 15/ net. The First Question.

“ The modern disposition to subordinate intellectual interests to material advantages is the most alarming evil of a super-materialistic age. Men no longer inquire about the morals or intellect of an individual. The question which agitates the public mind is: ‘ What is he worth?”—“ In the Land of the Pharaohs,*’ by Dux Mohamed. Stanley Paul and to. 10/6 net.

An Opposition That Knew Better. “Ismail Pasha made up his mind that it would be a good thing to have Egyptian Houses of Parliament. He got them together somehow, and proceeded to instruct them in their duties himself. He divided them into two lots, without any rhyme or reason in the selection, anil said to the people on one side: ’You are the government. You have to bring in the measures,’ and to the people on me other side: . ‘ You are the opposition-; you will have to oppose the measures. And then you can take a vote.’ “The first motion that Ismail suggested for them to discuss was an increase in his salary by so many, thousands a year. They all voted for it. “ * But you are the opposition,’ protested the Khedive to the people who had been so arbitrarily selected for the purpose. ‘ You ought to vote against it.’ “ But the opposition said, in other words: ‘ Never fear.’ They knew far too well which side their bread was buttered.”—“ Queer Things Alo.it Egypt,” by Douglas Sladen.