10
THE CITY OF SLEEP
IF you had lived in the ages when
people really belleved in dreams, when they were accepted as the channels by which divine warnings, admonitions, and commands were frequently conveyed to mortels, and also as the solemn shadows of things to come, you would have taken your own much more seriously.
Ը ven have been times There might when you would have been impelled
sue Incal to call in your Interpreter, to unfold for you their inner meaning, instead of diamissing them as mere cause, for some illusions, which
had been im- or physical, mental pressed on your subconscious mind.
You might even have believed that sleep, the soul or spirit, escaping in
little space from the bonds of for a The material body, entered into an- other land.
For have you not sometimes In dreams had
had the impression of arriv sort of citadel, whose cloudy ing at and indistinct portal swung back to let you in? Do you not remember that,
passing within, you came to it place that was like, and yet unlike, a town or city of earth? Did you never walk, almost ut once, into a sunny strect with houses and gar- dens
and
beyond a fair prospect, with towers and spires rising over distant hill slopes, from which came the sound of bells, only more softly Birth? Even than
ring on they when you hear them from far away, on some balmy night of spring, over dewy fields at the rising of the stars. flave you never heard those bella in the City of Sleep?
•
But if you have a fancy that you have been to it, you will know that File a City one of the old time saw And vision. It has many gates. in yet as the years go on, according to how often une goes to it, the enter
familiar. If ing in becomes
you passed through the gate that leads to the sunny street, you would see lo people who hastened from their
.to greet you,
If that has doorways happened to you, have you not won- dered
red who those dream people are? *There is no mystery about meeting in sleep those one loved and parted with on earth. It would be strange if those you hold unforgettably in your heart did not return in dreams.
But to meet. In the visions of the night others who seem to know you --people you have never seen any- where on earth, and who have no name, is something that cannot be Even their strange, explained. gentie nccents cannot be recalled. It is rather that without actual words, such as one understands them, they bold discourse in language loveller and more comforting than any earth. ly speech.
you never
Πάνο
gone in sleep harbour, down path that leads to and seen long lines of yellow sand curving qut and in beneath stretches of towering cliffs? Have you never seen ships in that harbour, rocking on a slow-moving. tide, and amongst the one that somehow you knew you awalted your coming? Have
boord and seen the never stepped on seafaring folk, cast off from their moorings, and spread the sails to the quiet wind? Have you not felt that gentle wind on your brow as you went out to a for, strange horizon-- but where? Surely in
dreams you have walk- ed in woodlands, and known by the fresh
dick.oughs above your path.
all
with gold and verdant In the sunny air, that it was of ring in the City
Sleep.
Have you never seen along the lite, beaten tracks, and across the flowery hollows, children come running to who seemed to know you, you, and
clasp you with joy, and holdi you close? Have you never carried in your arms a small, soft child, drowsy and sweet, and wondered when you awoke whose child it was, whose little head had nestled on your breast?
*
Of course, clever, practical people will tell you that all such fancles are of the stuff of dreams, and can be quite easily and sensibly explained away. That the sunny street you arrived at in your imagined journey- houses and with its pleasant
Is fair prospect, from which came the chiming of melodious bells, was just a picture you had built up in your inner mind, of a place in which you would perhaps have liked to live. That the nameless people who had hastened to greet you, were people you had no doubt met som.c whero, or seen, even passing you by in a crowd.
or attraction in the Some charm fleeting glimpse. you had of them, had Ungered in your memory, to be reproduced in dreams. And the go- ing on board, the walling ship was, undoubtedly, no more than a longing you perhaps had to adventure to distant lands, that circumstances may have always prevented. And likewise also, the children who ran to meet you in the woodland passes even the little helpless ono you
were carried in your arins,
most probably like those Charles Lamb you wrote of the dream"
once hoped to possess,js,
old
STAR BEGOTTEN
By J, G. Wells
(Chatto and Windus, Ga.) 'OSEPH DAVIS was an author. A Very Popular Author with the romantic touch. A teller of "the front-window story, the mother's knee story" of a brave, bright marel of mankind which had no me for dissidence or doubt. Joseph was for the show, the banera, the trumpets and the drums.
"Man winning all the' time and Right forever triumphant against That was his slogan. the odds,"
His books old and sold and sold. And then suddenly his mind began to slip and slide. Could it be, he whispered to himself, that all was not far the best in the best of all possible worlda?
It seemed that it could. Why do you keep up, Josepha? the whisper peralsted. Why do you pretend that à sort of destiny was unrolling? That I was all leading up to Anglicanism, erteket, the British Empire and wha! not? Look reality in the face. Then maybe something might be done about It."
And then, after a disturbing dis- cussion with some relentists at the Planetarium Club, Joseph got really Enttied. I was a preposterou Iden, but be grew more and more convinced thin the child which was soon to be born to him-he was sure, of courEC, that it would a son-tud been fathered by the cosmic rays, those amazing particles of power that go "sleeing through the universe inces. santly, day and night."
Of what happened afterwards-The spreading of the iden that the Mur tians were firing these rays at the earth, that the bombardment was evolving a new and oaner race of men, that our own silly, vain humanity was doomed-Mr. Wells himself must tell in this allegory, which is similar in drive and significance to his receuil Lale, The Croquet Player.
He has a glorious time, dancing round orthodoxy and putting out his Tongue nt officialdom, girding-and this hula ròways been his weakness-al mass movements and whipping up a tremendous general warning to us all. You will, perhaps, be shocked, and you will certainly be stimulated. For Mr. Wells is stil Mr. Wells. And here he gleefully throws one more slove through the front window of the world's complacency.
Nothing is Safe
By E. M. Delafield
(Macmillan, 73. Gd.) '168 DELAFIELD has joined the growing company of writers who are concerned about the effects of divorce on children. But she has not failen into any sentimental trap. minde any plea for the continuation of a disastrous marriage at all costs or a happy ending with love provided and kisses all round.
Ble tells her story entirely from the lowpoint of the children involved. When Julla' learned that the home was to be broken up, her first thought was what would become of the dog, Chang, and her second that her elder brother, Terry, would be upset.
For Miss Delafield has introduced a new variation on the theme of the dis- organisation of child-life through the parting of parents by her clever sketch of a neurotle boy who is too de. "pendent on his sturdy younger slater. Julia is a healthy, normal child, but 'she knows how Terry suffers when his 'make a man " stepfather attempts to of him or his stepmother leaves him to his own devices. Sie also senses the desolation that will descend on him when he finds that they have deelded to keep him away from her at holiday timo,!
Nothing is Safe conveys subtly and sympathetically the tragic helplessness of children, For the rest, the story has those touches of alry yet devastat- Ing humour and those quick, cruel sketches of character that you and I have come to expect of our by no means Provincial Lady,
P
RADIUM
By Rudolf Brunngraber (Harrap, 88. Gd.)
ESSIMISTS who bellove that the novel is finished should read the work of this young Austrian and note how he has en- larged the scope of action while maintaining its dramatic interest. In 1000 the research chemist who Curio afterwards became Madame noticed something odd about the photo- graph of a crystal, which led to the discovery of radium. This is the amaz. ing story of its exploitation.
For ages and ages it lles unknown. Almost as soon as it is found-and long before the sciential aro agreed
He about its nature or
is
•
hailed as the great eure-all' Men rush to neize it: its value goes up and up: and the human micry dependent on ita production and supply niso soars.
As soon as it escapes from the labo- ratory it becomes a work power, The men ilke Dr. Purvis, in this story, who want it simply and solely to cure can. cer, are swept.naldo by the man ke Pierre Cynac, who want to buy and sell it to their own commercial advah- lage.
America has almost a monopoly of theores from-which-radium is ex tracted, and those who own the fabul. dus mountainsʻziro'first made rich and then Juvolved in a fife-and-death strug glo with those who hope to find it else where. And so binek rnen slave in the Congo and white-women toll in Euro- poan factories—and what was hailed **¥*** DIOSES] is too often a curso,
Radium ta 'crammed with facis, but they read like flelion, so fantastic is the truth about the most precious sub- alance in the world. It is also it con- A fasci. Annualy by himan drama.
naling, pioneering noych,
R.P.
THE
HONGKONG TELEGRAPH.
FRIDAY, JULY 23, 1937.
BOOKS
World-Makers and World-Shakers
(Hogarth Prets, Is. Gd. each.)
Ow.much can be said cighty
OF THE WEEK Hages about the
Edited by Roger Pippett
IN CHIEF
H. G. WELLS issues another allegorical world
warning.
E. M. DELAFIELD writes of two children and
a broken marriage.
EUGENE N. MARAIS introduces you to the
empire of the termites.
RUDOLF · BRUNNGRABER stages
with radiuin as its hero.
a novel
THE SOUL of the WHITE ANT
T
By Eugene N. Mainls (Methuen, 78. Gd.)
19 is a sensible book with a There is no such silly title. thing as a white ant. That is the very, very unscientine name for the termites, the extraordin- ary family of insects which builds vast concrete skyscrapers all over the African and Australian pinins and in most other parts of the troples as well.
Termites are not ants. They have bren confused because both races have highly organised communites, better organised. In their impersonal way, than those of mighty clod-hopping Man himself.
Termites. smaller than conimon British ants, blind, defencelesz-except their soldiers, who can wield poison uns jets and dependent on steady heat and abundant molsture, have, aple of all these restrictions, domin- ated the earth in their own haunts Just as effectually as we do in ours,
Imperial Airways, pioneering a route to the Cape, blows up thousands of termite mounds and pillora su that liners altall be able to land and tab off. Imperial termites, uniwilling to te linquish even a square mile of their age-long empire, rebuild them.
A few men with dynamite wage con- thusl war against many millions of small insects with grains of sand and n sticky recretion which hardens on exposure to the air.... Honours are
even.
When termites attack town in the tropics, the town falls down. Ita pillars and ratters, its chair legs, table tops and books are all methodically hol- lowed out to flimsy shells. Termites
make interminable tunnels wherever there is wood....
Termites dig vertical wells more than sixty feet deep to find the water they inust have even in deserts. Ther cultivate fungi, as do certain anis, Al their endless, sleepless labuur is or- Kanised communally and none of it is
wasted.
But how is it organised? And why. when the great, int egg-loylog queen In her central palace is killed or 11- jured, does the colony, too, die or be come convulsed, unable to work, terri Bed?
The awer of the late Eugene Marais, who spent most of his life studying termites 11 South Africa. Is that a termitary is a unit, an indivi- dual being with a soul, corresponding to the human unit we call a man, And each termite corresports to a corpuscle f the matt's blood stream.
He says there is no other way to account for most of the fantastic things which happen automatically in. those concrete Mansions of the Blind.
11. P.
Coloured
Great Ones the world? Much more than you think, the authors of the Arst books in this series seem to have decided: for they have packed them with mate- rial frequently inore stimulating than wordier blographers, achieve In books five times as big.
In Socrates Naomi Mitchison and R, H. B. Crossman have pro- duced a portrait in miniature, a thumbnail sketch or what you will, which will make every render ask for more.
The background to their sketch is in itself an admirable Socratic commentary:
་་
...of course, fewer
men were killed in their wars than are killed in our modern civilised wars. And if you wanted. to destroy your enemies' town you carried off the treasure and statues and thinga Instead of drapping bombs on And them and smashing them. you sold the women and children into slavery, which was very un- pleasant, but not quite so bad as being Rossed."
Their Socrates,
for all the brevity of this blography, in pre- sented in the round: the gay Athenian who was too dangerous to live, wisest and most just man of his time, philosopher whose soul would not burn out,
What Mrs. Mitchilson and Mr. Cross- man do for Socrates, L. B. Pekin does for Daricin and V. Sackville-West for Joan of Arc.
And the fourth of this quartet of mind-stirrers in Marjorie Strachey's Mozzini, Garibaldi and Cavour-whem George Meredith called the Soul, the Sword, the Brain of Italy.
These three united Italy and freed It' from the yoke of foreign rulers. But the their story is unflakhed: " constitution for which Cavour toiled. the democracy for which Mazzini zur. fered, the freedom for which Garibaldi bied, have vanished from the kingdpin of Italy."
Perhaps this excellent series will one day include eighty pages on another
S. E. R. W. Ilberator....
Lamps One
Of The New Ideas For The Home
FE IN
DANCERS
MOURNING
O
By Margery Allingham flletnemans, 73. 6d.j
NE of the rarer pleasures of Faroviewor's routine is to
watch
author climb steadily to the top of his or her tree. That has happened, in my CRAC, with Margery Allingham.
Police at the Funeral, Mystery Mile, Death of 4 Ghost, Sweet Danger, Flowers for the Judge.... with cách succeeding tale she has increased my respect and delight. And, in Dancers in Mourning, she is better than ever.
The terror that haunts the hosts of White Walls and their guests sets that most human detective, Mr. Camplon, a problem which would have baffled Trent in his prime. For the corpse of Chloe Pye is only the-but to tell you more would spoil Mias Alifngham's deftly constructed story.
From the Astaire-like dancer on the dust-cover to the pleasant end-paper plan, this is an extremely distinguished performance. The writing shines. The characters live or die. The exclte- ment mounts. In short, it la Mins Allingham's day.
(Reprinted by Courtesy of The Evening Standard)
REW aspects of decorative pri have shadows thrown by the green lamp
been so rapidly developed in the are coloured red. past few years as that of lighting.
their
Modern house decorators have Velvet. Pano). realised the double advantages of A modern decorative effect which
port of using lighting #28
is still experimental, but which has schemes it is capable of the most already been used in practice in artistle effects and, at the same time,
each additional piece of decoration Germany, is throwing light on to a
panci of velvet. has a practical value, in increasing
A drawing is made on the velvet Most the amount of light in a room. rooms in private houses have been by brushing the outlines against the De pile with a toothbrush. In daylight shown by research and
experiment not to be fitted with enough artifi- the plain velvet panel is all that is seen; but directly a strong light is clal light or the
eyesight.
turned on above the picture stands pointed out to out. A lighting me fo-day some of the modern advances in decorative lighting,
This solves the problem of grow-
whlell are of particular interest with ing tired of pictures providing the the approach of spring, the tradition- householder is a little artistic. Every
ul time of the year to effect improve- time the panel is cleaned the pile ments in one's house.
Tubular Lamp.
plcture disappears, and one can have
*
a different velvet picture in the room every evening.
Another decorative idea, still in stage, was shown
The main achievement of modern the experimental lighting
It has been discovered that, is the architectural lamp. to me. This is the long, tubular lamp, need when ultra-violet light falls on cer- ing no shade, which can be seen in tain powders, the powders glow in
and bright colours. widespread
It is an adaptation of the method cinemas, buildings. It is rapidly gaining a already in use to determine the fat place in private houses.
content of margarine, for instance, Its virtue is that it can be had in by ultra-violet rays.
by use restaurants
shops And
public
There are many technical dim- before the
almost any length, and in a number R.P.
of different colours. It can cutline culties to be overcome the lintel of a door, pick out the idea is practical for house decora- shape of a book case or light up a tion, but lighting scientists are al- picture, edge a window pelmet, or ready working on it to adapt It to be formed into a wall bracket or a cinemas. pendant lamp.
Rapid Reviews
LIFE 18 MY ADVENTURE, by Bar- bara Mullen (Faber and Faber, wa, Gd.). Yet another autobiography from those Aran Islands. The author ⚫ ran away fot ten months' tour with
Katherine
"World's Leary, tho Champion Accordion Player." exciting, crowded, top-of-the-morn. Ing story.
An
A REGENCY RASCAL, by Kletilenant- Colonel W. P. Drury (Hutchinson, 75. ed.). How that young spendthrift, Jack Peregrine, borrowed money from an olderman and went on to make love to his daughter. And how the death of his father took him hall across the world. Romance and gusto.
THE FAMILY GARDEN, by Marguer- ito James (Jiarrap, 6s.). A delight- ful and practical volumo introducing "Gardening for Flat-Dwellers." Not forgetting the family garden-plot, lawns, vegetables, common and un- common, and the child's garden. SUSSEX, by Arthur Men, The King's England Beries, (Hodder and Slough fon, 10. Gd.). A four-hundred paga guide to one of the most attractivo of the Home Countles. With notes on three hundred places arranged in ADC order. For the holidays. ENGLAND'S GREATER CHURCHES (Batsford, J. Gd.). A splendid pic- torial survey containing nearly a hundred photographie illustrations, a running commentary, and an intro- duction by C. D. Nicholson.
But if you have had those dreams, such explanations may not allogether. convince you. For there may be. City of Sleep, just as there may be one with a wall of Jasper, And although the new interpreters aro wise in their generation, the visionaries were wise also. And has may go to the City of Sleep and you not the ancient Book of the Divine may not return. They who nwalt Wisdom, which has outlasted the you may tell you, in
on comforting speech, that you ages, on every page you turn' some- ' and
Wordsworth has bave come at last to stay, until you thing of what called, "the glory, and the dream?" may set out with them for yet But one day you may know. You another country. Where there may
their gentie
also be a sunny street, and bells that ring across its sheltering walls; softly as those heard from far away, some baling night of spring. over, dewy folds, at the rising of the stars.
Marion W. Blambsen
As it is vacuum lamp, with the Red and Green. filament running its whole length, it
can be used in any position, unlike
"Another new idea which I think
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You probably have often seen this English town tombstones 4 A soothing clixir
This one word implies the use of many
10 Illness that was originally mere-
ly discomfort 11 Soil
12 A definite number have their
place in this event
the ordinary gasfilled lamp, which will soon be common-place," added has its longest life when it hangs the lighting architect, "is to have a light-metre permanently built in to downwards.
The architectural lamp is admit- the lighting scheme of any room tedly more expensive to buy than on which is much used for work pulling is, after all, quite logical. ordinary lamp, but its running costs strain on the eyesight. are about the same, and the effect it Thousands of people have baro- gives in a room is much more strik meters in their houses to tell them what the weather is to be, and ther- mometers in their rooms to tell them of the place is whether the heating Coloured lighting is being used in proper order. P
17 A lemporary substitute When people realise how import 19 No, hot, a young female Ash; more and more in domestle architec- ture Building contractors have ant good lighting is to the eyes,
It is very annoying. even been incorporating it recently surely it is only natural that they 22 Book of the O.T.
warn 24 Vessels that should have light-meters 10 into speculatively built houses.
ing.
Built-in Light-mator.
more
13 Oddly enough this flower may
be white Incorrect, A
10
are quite self- nalisfied when upact.
this a gift!)
25 Masculine name (you will find
this 20 Plc.
29 Make of cur
Lighting experts have made in them when their lighting is below teresting research into the possibi- standard. iitles of coloured lighting. One of "Worn-out lighting is for the most striking and simple effects difficult to delect than bad heating, is to use two lamps to throw colour and can do far more harm to the health. A built-in light-meter in ed shadows.
The most successful colours, are important lighting points of a living-
If divided....If it were pos- red and green. The two lamps shine room is a practical and quite inex-31 or no value altogether yet spolit
alble from different angles; the shadows pensive idea for making sure that cast by the red lamp are thus colour- eyes are not being strained through 32. English poet ed green by the
other
and the neglect of lighting."
COUNT THE
"TELEGRAPHS"
EVERYWHERE
38 "One bite" (anag.).
DOWN
1 Disloyal behaviour is, of course
horrible
2 Carriage that is of intercet to
connoliseurs in wine
3 A palindromo
4 Not a preface but a mere ex-
cuse
Nurse's proper reparation when she let baby full in a puddle The substance of the matter
7 English town that provides oc- cupation for many who do not live in it
8 Only one old golf club, not a
sol
14. No, this cousin of the rhino-
ceros is not a light animal- 15 28 down after this tree would
make a flower-
...
18 Blunt description of an unla-
teresting talente
20 Vessel that many or mba carries
in his pocitali TUR
21 Iron is obtulhed from this part
of FranceR ZULLE
22 BehoxlourVANIZ, &
23 Mediterraneahliland
24 The young rook may have re-
marked this bird:
27 French Marshal é 20 Wine
Yesterday's-50
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LEAGUE
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LB 81 8
"DTHEON
GOLOSIN
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