Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1927-09-03

By the BGokIouer.

deadening of all the sensibilitieS or
even EQUALIZATION, and the life of
beauty, which enables man to live
alone in happy association with Ma
ture-is keenly realized and suggest
ed by Warwick Deeping in his novel
"Doomsday." After the World War
Arnold Furze becomes master of
Doomsday farm; often he feels that
the farm is master of him. In order
to redeem it's neglected acres from
the nettles, gorse, brambles, bracken,
ragwort and all the other weeds, he
| works from before daylight until
after candlelight, with never a holi-
| day, unless market days can be
called holidays. For five years now
| he has been able to call Domesday
his. He had fought it, loved it,
! wrestled with it and there had been
times when it had threatened to tear
the CUTS out of him. But that was
| life. Better than finnicking about in
an office and putting paper over your
shirt cuffs Five notable, terri
bic and glorious years, full of sweat
and hate and love and WEAKNESS and
a back that had refused to break,
and 4 stomach that would digest
anything" All these five years he
has lived for the soil alone. The
niceties of life have been uncon-
sidered. His big tiled kitchen has
also been parlor. dining room, bed
| room and workshop. There is a
camp bed in one corner, a work table
with implements for carpentry and
mending harness and shoes before
window, a pile of logs for the fire.
place in another corner and in the
center q dining table of deal boards
over four fence posts. He has not
had time. to think whether he is
happy, but at least he has been con-
tent, for the farm has prospered.
Then a woman comes to disturb
the unity of his life--to disturb it
without giving it the beauty which
| it needs. She stays but for mo-
ment and when she has gone she
has taken his content with her and
left only bitterness. Henceforth, his
work becomes drudgery and he sinks,
effortless. into life of squalor and
incipient brutishness. THAT all the
graciousness had gone out of his
life was an accepted fact, and he
| acknowledged it tacitly, if he troubled
to acknowledge it at air. If he
brutalized himself he did it with
stubborn set of the shoulders. He
would not let himself think or feel
above the level of his byres, or
beyond the limits of root crop.
A farmer should be of the
soil, or like a boot kicking q clod, or
like hands that caught and threw
sheep"
But this phase passes. Partly he
rescues himself. partly a woman res
cues him. He energies again to sat-
isfaction with the life of the soil and
has in addition a new appreciation of
the beauty of Doomsday. ITO Furze
it was very beautiful, with all it's
changing contours, it's high woods and
the swelling steepness of it's grass
and arabic. Never did it look the
same, but was eternally changeful
above the green deeps of it's valley,
where the brook ran down to Rushy
Pool. Difffcult-yes. but he never
grudged it it's difficulties; for beauty
that is loved is borne with in all
it's moods and mischiefs." Even when
the life of the farm is busiest. he
can spare moments to tend the flowers
in his sunken garden, to listen to the
blackbirds in the orchard or the
thrush on the old cedar tree. to look
at the primroses and blue-bells in
Gore Wood. and to enjoy the scene
of the neW-mown hay.
A philosophy more simply expressed.
but as pungent and as experienced
as that of Montague or La Roche
foucauld, is found in the sayings of
Alfred Aloysius Horn, as taken down
by Mrs. Ethelreda Lewis and pub
lished in the book Trader Horn"
Talking to Mrs. Lewis on the stoop
of her South African home, where
he first came to sell kitchenware, he
gave expression at different times to
words of wisdom in form almost
proverbs. 'Tis no gentlemans way
to give way to anything but philos-
ophy." II was always one for the
preservation of nature when humanity
possible" What won't any of us
do for magic? We call it luck now,
and that's the only difference" IAN
ape is surely Gods picture of the
unstable man, no doubt put up by
Providence as warning to all and
sundry." ""Tis fortunate for the
world English habits are more catch
ing than the so-called Latin infiu
ence." AYE. if we'd think Of death
as the hand of nature it'd be no
worse than lying down to sleep in
a cornfield." Some getaway for the
soul is necessary and that can only
be found in the open, whether air or
water" IF a books to be sold in
America you must keep an eye on
the novelties. 1 know America"
Here I am still. and even philan-
thropy can't rob me of my memories
and my pride in navigating a river
or two" What is poetry but the
leavings of superstition?" 1.-THE
Americans moral people. except
when it comes to murder and so on"
"And believe me. when man has de-
stroyed nature then it's his turn to
CO." "Big-game hunters-an equa-
toria1 gang of cut-throats, wasting
wild life to make what they call a
bag" Bacon for breakfast and
Shakespeare for reading've been good
enough for Lancashire and England.
generally speaking, for number of
generations There's no softness
about nature. When you're driven
from the herd it's for good"
X X
Literary vagabondia has received
another contribution in 1.-THE Glorious
Adventure" by Richard Halliburton,
who followed the wanderings of
Homer's Ulysses and wrote of what
he experienced. Starting FROM Athens.
not 1tnaca, ne HrSt clmDe0 Mount
Olympus and later struck the trail of
Ulysses at the island of Skyros This
rocky island in the middle of the
Aegean was the home Of Achilles,
sull1ing hero of the rIliad." 1t is also
a modern shrine. because it is the
burial place Of Rupert Brooke, whose
poetic promise was so great when he
fell in the World War, not long after
writing:
IF I should die. think only this of me:
That there's some corner of foreign field
That is forever England.
On the way from Skyros to Troy Mr..
Halliburton swan the Hellespont. At
Troy he sat on the hill where Helen