Answers to Correspondents

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 16, 26 April 1923, Page 25

Answers to Correspondents

Joyful Catholic. Regret we do not find letter suitable just at present. Inquirer.—Ouida’s name was Louise de la llamee. She was a woman of eccentric ways and loved to show her contempt for conventions. Her books were barbaric in their staging of lawless lords and light ladies dancing across the scene to the accompaniment of tawdry Byronic sentimentality, all in English that could hardly be described as style. If you want to go back to the last century for a good novel, do not disinter Ouida, but buy up Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade, and Sir Walter Besant. They deliver the goods. No writer of our time tells a better or cleaner story. Reader. The Chiniquy person, who you say is quoted in certain anti-Catholic rags in New Zealand, was excommunicated by the Catholic Church on August 3, 1858. The weed thus thrown over the Rope’s garden wall was picked up and treasured as a flower by the Presbyterians, who formally received him in April, 1860. Shortly after they dismissed him for pocketing the collections. His ravings are quoted by some New Zealand parsons, but no clean-minded Protestant would permit his daughter to handle the ruffian’s books. Sacerdos.—You find fault with us for giving the children a page, and others tell us we ought to have done so . years ago. In the same way, some tell us that avc are now too British for them, while others say avo are too anti-English. Some Avant this and some Avant that, and there does not seem to be anybody Avho remembers that something ought to be left to the editor’s judgment. On the AA'hole avc flatter ourselves that avc could give any martyr ninety yards’ start in a hundred and hit the tape in front of him. Please let us know if you know of any man Avho wants a hand at breaking stones.