Life — March 31, 1910 — page 30: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

oie Oe eel ha OMETHING must have happened lately in British East Africa. Books dealing with that once benighted region are be- ginning to roll in like waves on the beach after an excursion steamer has gone by. But perhaps the nature of the disturbance has already been re- ported—I read so many books myself that I seldom sce the papers. One of these recent volumes is called The Land of the Lion (Doubleday, Page & Co., $3.80), and contains a pleasantly informal and decidedly informing ac- count of W. S. Rainsford’s extended journeyings in the British t African wilderness. It is of prime importance in so personal a work as an account of sport and travel that there should be a personality behind the pen and that it should flow freely through the pen. It is the absence of the personal equa- tion that makes the guide book. And it is its presence that makes The Land of the Lion, Dr. Rainsford walked some four thousand miles, shot many varicties of game, consorted with many kinds of dark humanity and was unaffectedly and intelligently interested in all the aspects of the life around him. His book not only arouses one’s interest but ministers to one’s understanding. NOTHER book, and in a special and non-literary sense a more valuable cs well as a more striking one, is Radelyffe Dugmore’s Camera Adventures in the African Wilds (Doubleday, Page & Co., $6.00), Mr. Dugmore’s work as a photographer-naturalist is widely known, and this volume contains the records, pictorial as well as verbal, of a long planned and carefully prepared expedition, the object of which was the photographing of the wild animals of tropical Airica, and the results of which are in some ways unequaled. About five or six years ago a wealthy German sportsman named Schillings led a similar photographic expedition into Africa; but, interesting as were some of his results, his fail- ure to master the telephoto lens and his cautious mechanical methods of flashlight work at night made many of his daylight pictures worthless and most of his portraits of carnivora dis illusioning. Dugmore's telephoto work is most creditable and his point-blank pictures of charging rhinoceros and his flash- lights of lions coming to their own “kill,” and taken by the author in person at a few yards’ distance, arc, so far, the top- notch of az: mal photographs © such appreciative readers as were lucky enough two years ago to come across an unobtrusive and, externally, a by no means self-explanatory volume called A Draught of the Blue, that contained some exquisite translations of ol1 Hindu stories by F. W. Bain, the announcement of a new book containing another tale from the same literature done into English by the same student of beauty and artist in words will be enough to focus interest and arouse anticipa- tion. I would like, if I could, to earn the gratitude of least some of the many others less fortunate but equally ap- preciative by introducing them to Mr. Rain's new book, 1 Mine of Faults (G. P. Putnam's Sons, $1.25). This isa story told long ago by Maheshwara, the Zeus of the Himalayan Olympus, to Parwati, his wife, to at once prove the justice and illustrate the subtler meaning of the Hindu epithet often a: plied to woman and meaning cither the moon, the “lender of beauty to the du a mine of faults.” It is a love story such as we moderns of the West have forgotten how to For it is as naive and direct as a child’s fairy tale, as radiant with the romance of youth as youth itself, and yet it is compact of that Oriental comprehension and acceptance of the whole meaning of life that is so near to wisdom and so far removed from mere sophistication, Apart from the sheer charm of the old legend and from the skill of the English wordsmith who has re-set it for us, the book serves to remind us (wko so sorely need the reminder) that man’s understand- ing of the heart of man antedated our specializations in science and psychology. Berponar act pc J. B. Kerfoot. A Mine of Faults, by F W, Bain. See above. A Certain Ri Man, by William Allen Whit The evolution of the American’ millionaire. An interesting story that suffers for want of kneading. Ann Veronica, by H. G. Wells. An insalubrious romance that starts out to be the rtudy of a type and ends in the whitewashing of a heroine. An Interrupted Friendship, by E. L. Voynich, An entertain and picturesque story which a tragedy in a teapot is invested with the dignity of the inevitable. The Ball and the Cross, by G. K. Chesterton, A modern allegory of Faith and Skepticism. ‘Brilliant but badly jumbled oweifila, Penna, by Robert Hichens. Six hours of Nile fever, fol Jowed by nausea. Camera Adventures in the African Wilds, by A. R. Dugmors. See above. WRING OUT WILD BELLES comicbooks.com