Daily Kennebec journal., 1908-06-01

pleasure of this "adviser in literature
to the arist0cracy," he actually strong
y advised q chance customer, lady,
not to buy it, and offered her some
thing of the same sort, 9 only a good
deal better" The lady in question was
a simple soul, and would not have Ven-
turcd to dispute the judgment Of so re-
| noWncd a critic, but she happened to
De the aunt of the author of the book,
and as she was buying it more from a
sense OF family duty than for any
| other reason, she felt aggricved, and
ventilated her grievance, and it was
thea discovered that other inQuirers
for the same book had Jared in the
same manner in the same shop. Now
these people are looking out for book
sellers where the methods of the cheap
drugstore are not in use, and the mat
ter having been reported to the pub
Usher Of the book. there is some talk
of a possibility Of further developments.
We shall await these with great inter-
est. 1t was at the same highly fash
ionable resort that the writer of this
note once tried to obtain n copy of
Barniieids poems. He mentioned that
Scholars Library, and the omniscient
gentleman to whom we have referred
graciously promised to get him q copy
if possible. Months, and finally years.
went by, and still it was apparently
impossible to obtain q copy, although
no particular limit as to price had been
mentioned, and although the gentleman
referred to assured him that he had
advertised for the book and made
every cuncciva bic effort to obtain n
copy. About three years after the com
mission to obtain the book had elapsed,
the search was abandoned, and some
three weeks afterwards the writer of
this note commented to a friend on the
extraordinary difficulty of getting
Barnfield'S poems. The friend, who
was wise. merely smiled, and appeared
on the following day with two copies
of the book, purchased at Glashiers in
the Strand, where there had been all
the time a plentiful supply of these
volumes in the identical bcfore-men-
tened "t,nglish Scholars Library Sc
rcs, and at the original price.
Hall Caine has abandoned novel
writing for the moment. and is en-
gagged in preparing an autobiography
cal record OF his career We may eX-
pect it to be remarkable for the in
cident it will detail and, perhaps, for
the imagination it will disclose. 1t is
now appearing serially in the pages of
N A. r., an English weekly, as My
story" and it will set forth Mr.
Gaines hoyhOod in the Isle of Man.
his early experiences in London as the
friend Of Rossetti. and other pre-
Rapliaclites, his beginnings in litera-
tur", his achievements as a writer of
plays, and q profusion Of pcrsCnalia
concerning the many eminent men
with whom he has come in contact
He begins "Thc story of how l be-
came 4 novelist takes me back nearly
forty years. when, as a child of five I
was living off and on at intervals in Il
little matched cottage on the high
road through one of the remOter par
isncS in the Isle of Man. 1t was the
home Of an uncle, who was small
farmer, as Wen as Il butcher. In his
character as farmer he cultivated some
thirty acres OF land, much of it hiily
and hungry, and some of it boggy and
peaty In his character as butcher
he killed the sheep he had sraZed on
the mountain slopes. and made weekly
journeys to Douglas, the chief town
cf the island to sell his meat from a
stall which stood in the market place
under the turret Of an old church. Or
one OF these journeys | was per-
mitted to go with him, and, though l
knew 1t so little at the time, | think
now that, not only my first clear inn
preston of the Isle of Man, but also
my earliest sense of life and the world
must date from that experience A
rang" OF hills crosses the island from
the northeast to the northwest, and
our home lay on the north side OF
them, while Douglas lies on the south
NV recollection is that, contrary to
the usual practice Of farmer-butcher
which was to so round the little range
my uncle Travelled to Douglas by a
path that crossed the mountains
through the valley, called Sulby Glen.
IN order to realize what that journey
meant to me, and the impression made
upon my mind, it is necessary to think
Of me as child. We We're in an open
cart without springs, and a corner was
left for me amid the carcasses of
sheep and lambs, and the clusters of
'pucks' and heads while the uncle
in the Garibaldan red shirt he gener-
ally wore, sat on the front board with
his feet on the shaft That ascent of
Snaefell and the getting to the top,
and then the wilderness of waste
space with the sea on every hand, and
finally the descent into the new world
beyond, where the unknown town lay
far away in the depths below, was a
bieathless adventure, ! have crossed
most of the great passes of Europe
since then, but none of them have
brought me sucn a thrilling sense of
the vaStness of the world and the
mighty things of nature And yet it
was only our poor little Isle of Man,
seen through the eyes of a child.'
Boats of 2OOO to 3iNH fonnage now r1y