By.A. R. Williams "donat Cape. 73:
The author of a book unusually distinctive and original in quality seems to have conspired with his publisher to advertise his aim and Accomplishment as commonplace, The title, the sub-title, and the early. chapters, all suggest that the volume "is a collection of rural essays about nothing in particular. "The Cornfield," which opens the book, is an indifferent effort in the Jefferies vein, designed to give a general picture of a wheat field The few references to the field's inhabitants are inadequate, if not ignorant, even in allusions to that! far from esoteric bird, the sparrows and the botany, as in later reference "Hemlock," is superficial. subsequent chapter devoted wholly: to the pheasant is almost ludicrously. naive, and the detailed account how this bird and that was seen in this and that is a model of the worst sort of rural essay—a fervent and sometimes ill-written record of unessential and unselected episodes, Some misprints do not improve the impression.
These faults notwithstanding—they are chiefly faults of fal: emphasis-—the bulk of the book has virtue of a rare sort. A conscientious objector—so it may be inferred sent off to serve on the land, first in one sort of traffic, ther another, He is new to the work and awkward; and his _sensitive mind-—to some extent his much-enduring body—rebels against. both the toil itself and the crudity, sometimes the cruelty of the rural employer. Ineidents—as of the murdered pony in the Tane or the boy killed in the hop-field—are told with admirable reticence and an. almost French skill in the bringing out of grim, essentials. They are inspired by a passionate hatred of brutality. Apart from such stories, which presumably overflow from' fact into, fiction, the successive pictures of }ife on the land are admirable in their realistic drama, The shepherd at lambing time combines. in his character and actions a wonder-. ful love and understanding animals with a philosophic hardness: that appears to the townsman a3 merely insensate. Fastidious per sons, living among secondary things, can only wonder at the elemental countryman combining indifference. to death with infinite care for the living. It is the personal illustration, of this conflict of views that gives Mr. William's "Cornfield" ite chief claim to attention. Each mentality. iluminates the other.
The book is a strange study i contrast in many ways. Disrespec for grammar is associated with admirably restrained and effective manner of writing; and some of the delightfully human sketches of work on the land—as in an account of a struggle with the Planet hoe—have quite ludicrous daubs of ingenuous ignorance. But what is good—and that is the greater part—is very, good, because very real; mood of pity for suffering is never spoiled by self-pity or, adjectival
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.