Evening star., 1933-01-07
THE LIBRARY TABLE
BY SARAH G. BOEERMAN.

Companions" and Angel Pavement,
together with Gilbert and Sullivan
opera elements. 1t is very modern
Treasure Island" The story opens on
a placid, even stupid, scene in the
stuffy sitting room of William Dursley,
bachelor, of Birmingham, Suffolk, who
has a small malt business and other
wise leads an uninteresting, exemplary
life, perfectly satisfactory to himself.
He and his friend GreenlaW, teacher,
as proSaic as himself, are playing at
chess. Into this quiet atmosphere
bursts Williams uncle, Baldwin Totten,
diSsipated South Sea adventurer, re-
turned to die in his nepheW's home,
Dying, he leaves as a legacy informa-
ton about an uncharted South Sea
island where is huge vein of pitch
blende, rich in radium. The latitude
and longitude of the island he has sent
to two other persons who have been
kind to him, Comdr. Ivybridge, retired,
and P. T. Riley of San Francisco. Will
liam is instructed to find these two and
with them to go to the island and make
their fortunes. He at first reacts to the
idea as any sensible person would, that
is, he laughs at it as altogether ridicu-
lous. Then the romance of the scheme
selzes upon his starved imagination and
he suddenly decides to abandon his
routine life, where everything can be
predicted in advance, and to follow ad-
venture. Here We have the theme of
the story-the longing for romance
which often turks in even the seemingly
most prosaic personality.
The first part of the narrative con-
Germs Williams search for Comdr. wv
bridge and P. T. Riley (who turns out
to be woman of the Hollywood type) ::
the addition to the party of Ramsbot-
TOM wealthy grocery merchant, who il
nursing poor health at a seaside resort
and gladly agrees to finance the COM
mander and to try adventure as a new
cure; and the departure of all for
Tahiti. William goes by way of the
United States, to San Francisco, to
md P. T. Riley, and the descriptions of
his journey across the country and of
San Francisco are full of Mr.. Priest
ley's characteristic humor. and give lis
view Of the United States as seen by
a perhaps average Englishman Will
liam has passed Chicago: 1T was not
long before the landscape became larger
ana untidler than ever, and gradually
men began to disappear from it. Dusty
plains followed the cultivated fields.
only to be followed in their turn by
sheer desert, leagues Of fantastic rock
and hills as uncompromisingly barren
and as wrinkled in the sun as an old
mans brown gums. There
was something alternately maddening
and depressing about the way in which
the lives of these people refused to
change, as If God had ordained that
they should carry with them into these
WildernesseS an Ark of the Covenant
containing specimens of Chesterfield
and Lucky Strike cigarettes; the uni
Versal hfe-savers, chewing gum and
Coca-Cola, and model of a Ford car.
1t was incredible that this
now familiar interior of hot, dry air,
magazines and dollar novels, ice water
and steak and apple pie, had Just
shaken him out Of Cheyenne, Wyo., and
was even now climbing toward Ogden,
Utah. On Sunday morning of crisp
sunshine he stood among a group of
his fellow travellers, all busy photo
graphing IN the observation car at the
back OF the train, and gaped at the
Great Salt Lake, a vast sheet of blue
glass, across which the train went
rafting for more than an hour. He
actually crossing on cutoff that re-
treated into a knife edge the famous
Great Salt Lake, around whose en-
crusted shores, where the salt seemed
to sparkle ready for the cruet, were
spread those legendary and sinister
creatures, the Mormons."
X X
When they reach Tahiti. the mem
0f tl1n oNfvv =
ton in this stage of their adventure that
they almost become lotus-eaters end
forget Faraway-au except the stern
moralist Comdr. Ivybridge. who knows
that his code is outworn, but continues
to believe in it nevertheless. William
evolves from a staid bachelor into an
eager man of pleasure-and back again.
The vulgar, hcentiouS Ramsbottom feels
that he is getting full value for his
capital in the unaccustomed dissipations
OF the tropics, but as months pass be-
gins to think of the joys of Simpsons
restaurant in London, with its under
done sirloins, Yorkshire pudding, goose
berry tarts and ripe stilton. So long is
the stay in Tahiti that We begin to
fear that Faraway is a myth. But
PARKWAY is real and is finally reached
Then comes denouement which is a
end William returns to Birmingham
with Wife-not the one he wanted
The book ends as it began. with Will
liam playing at chess in his Stuffy sit
ting room with his friend GreenlaW
only now his wife also sits by the fire
side, and he himself has changed. He
glances from the chess board to the
photographs of Tahiti on the walls and
sees Visions of warm, duSky nights ano
dreams OF the romance which Terry
so briefly promised him. According tc
the point of view. his life is either
spoiled or enriched. His wife ano
Greenlew sat there like pair Of lump
ish warders. He looked at them and
hated them. Then he looked at them
again; at his wife. whose wide, cleaI
glance met his, and who smiled, prob
ably because the baf1ed expression he
wore was rather droll; and at his Ole
friend, sitting back there like benign
ant and scholarly Walrus, and then he
hated himself"
What was really a religious war be-
tween Chinese" Gordon and the Mahdi
of Allah was one of the most intense
episodes of the reign of Queen Victoria
The whole story is retold in The Mahdi
Of Allah" by Richard A. Bermann. The
famous Mahdi was originally a mendi-
can't begging food from one village tC
another; eventually he was master OF
the Soudan. He succeeded in building
up body of followers, fanatical in the
extreme, who believed that they were
immune to bullets. These fanatics
Gordon faced, and at their hands met
his death. The Mahdi continued to live
on hut gradually lost his prestige wit h
his followers. His successor was re-
duced to subsection by Kitchener. To-
day son of the Mahdi lives in Khar-
toum, by a strange coincidence, in Cor
don avenue.
4 X \
Religion as interpreted by Dr. Harry
Emerson Fosdick, in his volume of
essays "As 1 See Religion" may be
immeasurably different from the reli-
gion of the early Christian fathers or
even from that of the most orthodox
of any church today. but it is not
merely state of mind or an escape