The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-12-22

writer determined to ask Sir Arthur what was doing in this direction. He is rarely in London now, so a letter
 was addressed to him at his country home in Sussex. Emphasis was laid on the fact that Abdul Hamid and n lot more of Us desire to read further | tales of Holmes. and the writer was asked if he meant to oblige with some
 in the near, or even the pretty near future.
 Sir Arthurs reply is written on one of his visiting cards. This "pasteboard' | reads: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Nindle- | sham Crowborough," and it also bears the name of the authors club. the dig
 nified and famous "Athenacum. But, alas, the message that is inscribed there upon. in the neat hand with which many plans and diagrams in Sir Arthur's sto-
 ries have made us familiar is this laconic
 and disappointing one. "I fear not, though Sir Arthur good naturedly adds: Kindly greetings,"
 So evidently we shall have 10 possess
 our souls in patience until the spirit | moves the creator of Sherlock Holmes to send him sleuthing once more.
 Haggard to India
 Meanwhile another famous literary knight has left England to make lengthy
 travels in the colonies. This is Sir Rider Haggard, the first chapters of whose new novel, Smith and the Pharaohs." ap ! pear in the current number of a ma gazine l published on both sides of the Atlantic. i No doubt Sir Henry. as he now prefers to | be called got the material for this story 1 when he in Egypt several months
 ago He makes his latest journey as q
 member of the dominions royal com- mission. and sailed for India on Friday | last. On February l. he will meet the
 other members of the commission at
 Colombo, and will go with them to New | Zealand. He does not expect to get back 1 home until June or July next.
 | It is rather a coincidence that the au- thors of the two unquestionably best nov 1 els that have been written about Fleet l street.-the Newspaper Row of London should both be in the Balkans as war
 correspondents. One of these is Philip
 Gibbs, whose novel, "The Street of Ad-
 venture," was looked upon as about as
 good a story of the London newspaper
 world as could be written until the other
 man, Alphonse Courlander came along with his "Mightier Than the Sword" :" | which had all the good qualities of Gibbs novel and avoided it's chief de-
 feet of being bit too idealistic
 | Gibbs, by the bye, is the young man | with the nicotine stained fingers" who
 took Arnold Bennett to lunch in the early ] days when the novelist of the Five Towns was editing woman's paper at | a microscopic salary and producing | thriller serials ''on the side.' and 1 charmed himself into selling "rhe Grand
 Babylon Hotel' at d low figure. In his Truth About an Author" you may
 remember, Bennett issues a solemn warn 1 ing against having lunch with very young looking men who smoke inordinate
 numbers of cigarettes and buy novels
 from one over the luncheon table l Gibbs, who is representing The Graphic | at the front-or as near the front as te 0 correspondents have been allowed to SC --
 has written several novels, including ia
 tellectual Mansions and Helen of Ian
 caster Gate" He is 40 odd, or more than
 a decade older than his fellow author and
 war correspondent. Courlander. This 1 young man, who is of Polish origin and whose real name lacks the final Ter" l has made good rapidly. A few years ago | he was a cub reporter on the London Chronicle. Today he is one of the star"
 men of the Daily Express, and has six or
 seven novels to his credit, all in diff l ferent veins, and each a really able
 piece of work of it's kind. Every now and | then, too, one sees a short story of hIs 1 in the American magazines. Most of the
 characters in "Mightier Than the Sword ,
 were composite portraits, the Napoleonic | newspaper owner therein being blend
 of C. Arthur Pearson. Courlanders own
 employer, and Lord Northeliffe, who be-
 gan life as Alfred Harmsworth and is
 now the proprietor Of more periodicals, | including the Times and the Daily Mail.
 than he probably can remember the | names of.
 i Slowly but surely all the bad characters of history are being whtewashed. The 1 latest is-whom do you suppose ?-Old | King Cole Not that we think King Cole,
 who, it seems, reigned at Colchester in A. D. 306, as really hard case. but it now appears that he was not even as
 merry an old soul as has been repre-
 scented. Somebody rejoicing in the name
 of Lucas P. Stubbs has written and 1 solemnly published a whole pamphlet
 with the aim of, as he says, "rehabilltat-
 ing the maligned monarch" The king of
 the 'pipe and bowl'' and the "fiddlers { three' was, according to Stubbs, King | Cole the Second, and in Colchester today
 there is a large earthwork that goes by
 the name of King Coles kitchen" The
 conclusion which this writer comes to, l after painstaking research is that King | Coles character was exemplary and his
 disposition happy, but Stubbs declares
 that the kings ''merrness like the first
 report of Mark Twan's death, has been | greatly exaggerated"