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Show I THE CITIZEN I M"lHllimHIHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIHIIIIHIIHimHlHHIIIIimiHliri1lll THINGS BOOKISH ... I iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiiiiiiHiiiiiiiiuniiiitiiiniiiiniiiiuiNiiiiiiiHiHunuiiiiiuiuiiuiuuuuiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiimiiuiiiiiiiiiuiiuiuuiiiiiiiiiiiiuuuiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiuuiiHiiiiiiiij I ' Edited By WILLIAM C. WINDER, Jr. In the realm of fancy we have been carried tonight to faraway Australia, borne on the wings of a worth while book, one which has richly and vividly evoked that indefinable lure of the bush. We have barely stopped at the cities of the south; passed in a state of indifference the cultivated farms on our way northward; waited impatiently for a few hours at the squalid, brutal towns through which excited men pass on their way to the booming gold mines; have resumed our journey and are now approaching the great northwest. We have arrived at last at the cattle country, the great Australian desert. There is something of its poison in our veins, something of that magic of vast silences, of an inscrutable immensity hovering over our littleness beckoning us on and refusing to let us turn back. We peer out over the vast sameness of the undulating plain which only ends in the purple horizon. There is in the air that quality which the unconscious longing of youth goes out. to seek. Somewhere, perhaps in the awakening glory of morning, in the in the mild cruel heat of mid-daclemency of evening, in the mystery of night it might be found, and when found, held, never to be relinAnd then certain doubts quished. are borne back upon us, and the question looms large. After all, are these lilac visions of youth wonderful horizons ? Or will the coming of experience simply show that purple haze in the distance to be a prison wall, hard as adamant and remorseless as y, that desert sun at mid-day- ? Such dreams as this carl be evoked only by the pen of a man who knows the land and loves it because he knows it; by one who understands all the varying moods of that thing which to most of us seems inanimate and speechless, but which whispers its secrets to those whose ears are near the ground. As there are men whose voice is that of a race or a ctiy, so are there artists whose voice is that of the land or the elements As Joseph in all their nakedness. Conrad interprets for us in polished prose the calm and the turmoil' of the sea and the heart of darkness in those Congo jungles as W. H. Hudson charms us with the message of the South American Pampas; as Frederick OBrien, to a less degree, speaks the language of the ing South Sea' Islands and interprets for us that fatal malady which has sealed the doom of once joyous and splendid races; as Rene Maran, in the person of his chief Batoula, portrays" the mournful, agony of trampled Africa; so does .Grant Watson hear the hope and desolation, sometimes the madness and death and pass on to us the magic and lure, always an indefinable grandeur,' irf the oldness, in the immen . sity, in the virginity of that entity known as the Australian bush. It is a number of years ago that I read Watson's first book, Where Bonds are Loosed, yet I doubt now that I will ever forget, its detail. That book was not brilliantly executed; in fact I think that its very simplicity of form and crudeness of expression added to it a power and sense of veracity which more beautiful writing would have made impossible. In this book there was a magnificent sincerity combined with a rare power of observation and a deep and abiding love for the land and for the puppets who so ably carried out the desires of his fertile brain. I decided when 1 read the book that it was a good one, a book full of a rare promise, and although 1 have thought over the matter many times since, I still do not find it necessary to reverse my former judgment. Published almost at the same time as this' book was The Mainland, and later followed Deliverance and The These three books Other Magic. deal less with the land and more with human beings and their emotions; and their value decreases almost to the extent that their author takes his ear from the ground and instead attempts to unravel the motives and desires of men and women. These books all fell below the promise of Where Bonds are Loosed, but they were redeemed by the coming of his Watfifth, The Desert Horizon. son here reverts to his first great love, the bush; and all his people, no matter how sturdy their faith, how rosy their hope, how poignant their loneliness and discontent, how tragic their disaster and death, will be forgotten some day; but the voice of that unyielding, treacherous land, whose wildness they tried so hard in vain to tame, will go sighing and rustling and whispering down through the ears. -The Desert Horizon appeals to my imagination and calls to my heart. There is something of deep tragedy in the lives of these pioneers, who dare to stand forth to conquer the unconquerable, which pulls at my heartstrings. Armed legions are at times superb in their bravery, but at its best theirs cannot compare with y the hopeless, bravery which urges a man, and sometimes a woman, into the unbroken solitude that drives men into madness. I do not know whether this is a great book or not; there is something about it which disarms my critical faculty. In. fifty years it may be unknown; yet I am quite sure that if I am alive at that time I will then read it again with the same relish and enjoyment that I do today. This volume is simply a talc of the first stage in the life of Martin OBrien, taking him from earliest fool-hard- childhood into manhood; also of his mother and father, of his sister and two brothers, of his few friends and acquaintances, some of them white and some black. Under the skin,, though, the color of these acquaintances was very often reversed. With the minor characters of the book, their author plays no favorites. They appear for a moment as they affect the life of Martin; then they disappear forever as they do in real life. How many otherwise good books have been ruined by trying to bring back all the characters in finished form for the happy grouping at the falling of the curtain! Watson is happy in knowing that such artificial endings do not happen in life. Each year we meet new people; we are perhaps influenced, affected by that short acquaintance, but it is as though our minds were brushed by a wing of a flying bird. They are with us today; tomorrow they will likely be many miles away and lost to us forever. Of such things is life made, and as living beings are these book people pictured. . I remarked that the book contained some living beings. They are human, intensely so! While they do not form the deep underlying spirit of the book yet Watson has breathed the breath of life into their bodies and we readily recognize them as akin to ourselves. Their hopes are our hopes, their sorrow is ours, too. In months I have read nothing quite so tragically appealing as the long trek over the desert of the four little OBriens in search of their father after the death of their mother. There is in the whole episode not a word of mawkish sentimentality or a And single gesture of tear-squeezin- g. possibly just on that account and' because of its simple, tragic sincerity, I brushed away many a furtive tear. I somehow forgot that it was just a story out of a book. Mr. E. L. Grant Watson first went to Australia and the islands as a member of a scientific research party, and to this fact we can lay a certain share of the charm of his books. His scientific training must have developed his powers of observation to an unusual degree, and in all his works, and the latest one especially, one finds a deep knowledge of all the animal and plant life of the country. His great interest in the habits of the insects and small animals, and the fascinating manner in which he writes of them, remind one greatly of the books of Mr. Hudson, and of course add much in the evocation of the unforgettable pictures of that far-o- ff land. When one has passed the frontier into the vast wastelands of the earth there is very little of conventional civilization which counts for aught. Alone in the desert with nothing in sight but miles upon miles of stunted undergrowth, with the sure knowledge that the only aid in case of trouble can come from within, that the vast waves of land look remorselessly on while the malignant sun lures into madness and death, then can man find little comfort in the subterfuges and excuse with which throughout the centuries we have learned to clothe , ourselves. It is strange how that condition which we know as civilization has so little value when put to the supreme test, when it is placed face to . with elemental things. Through of years it has been the aim of men to cover themselves with the painted veils of illusion, to hide from themselves the cruel, hard facts of existence. Thus they have lost themselves in the process of absorbing a new false identity. In their unreasonable belief or hope that some supernatural being is directly interested iffii-dre- ds in their puny, useless worries and strivings, they have forgotten their most wonderful gift of It is only when placed alone bf&re the heartless facts of the elements that they throw off this gloss and tinsel and dare to defy the land to do its worst. If the paint of their civilization will not come off, there is then just one thing which faces them, death. When I speak thus of that which is known as civilization, it is not with a feeling of its ultimate failure. It is, however, with a firm belief that to survive it must change its ways, must change its fundamental methods and beliefs. It must fearlessly face existence as it is, and not as it is painted in rainbow hues for the benefit of cowards and weaklings. In the voice of the wastelands and the bush there is a murmuring of vast promise and yet a tone of finality. It is that indefinable promise which leads men on, which develops in them all that is greatest and lowest, in fact strips them naked before the infinite. There is a tone of finalland ity in the aspect of the age-ol- d still defying all the efforts of man to subdue it; a tone of finality in its vast impassive immensity; in the distant blue sky which envelopes all with a heartrending solitude; in the unbroken silences which make of men but an atom to live if he can bring himself close enough to nature to stand the strain, otherwise, to be destroyed. I realize that this may carry with it a note of pessimism and hopelessness to many, but if it does it is again the fault of the illusions with which we have covered ourselves. It is only in the realization oLsuch things as really existing thaSbnen can be reborn into that higher existence where the divine instincts and impulses which nature placed within them can have full play. To such a man, one who is able to demand instead of implore, that desert wall beyond the miles of bush is in reality a purple horizon of hope instead of the grey wall of his spiritual and mental prison. self-relianc- e. Women are slaves to fashion, of the course, but what shall be said vaseline-haire- d sheiks?. In winter Europe suffers starvation and cold, and in summer it thinks of war. Something ought to be done about it.Chicago News. |