Mr. Joyson's descriptions of his thoughts and mental processes while he was passing through the earlier stages of his madness create a weighty. impression upon the reader, and also Some question as to whether he could really. remember all. that through his mind during that period, On the other hand, it may help people not immediately concerned with the handling of the feeble-minded if they understand that very often the mentally deficient are intractable merely because they seek to withdraw into a world of their. own, from which they can only be enticed by the cleverest psychological treatment, The author in this really remarkable book describes the. slow and gentle means subsequently employed to bring about that degree of self-confidence which permitted him to emerge from the world of his own fashioning, and perusal of such a book as this should give x message of hope and encouragement to those whose relatives or friends may be similarly An Optimist's Travelogue emg W, Uneaig Pusiog Wilms w"Nornate, London, 10/6.
That Mr. Puxley has travelled extensively over a period of many years cannot be doubted for one moment, but his adventures—welll perhaps' they are mentioned Snother volume, for in this present ook they are conspicuous only by their absence. The author, in showing a distinct Jack of ability to write clearly and methodically, grammati-Jeally and chronologically, has himself been solely responsible for having produced a travelogue that cannot be termed by even the most sympathetic critic as being interesting, readable or capable of appealing to the none too discriminating reader's imagina~ ton. This would seem to be a great pity for during his many sojourns all corners of the globe, Mr. Puxley has probably. amassed a- con siderable wealth of detail, data and experience that, placed on paper in less haphazard and slipshod man-per and edited with more care, could well have resulted in a. work that might have been both instruetive and enjoyable.
Those First Impressions But, as he says in his introduction, he feels quite justified in having written this book even if only a very few readers derive a small measure of pleasure therefrom. Mr. "Puxley must surely be an inveterate optic mist to hope that anyone could gather enjoyment from his laboured and far from graphic descriptions of the places he has seen and visited, his attempts to reproduce for the Feader those first Impressions that a new vista of scenery indelibly slamps on tke traveller's memory. being a lamentable failure, while his involved, dull and insipid accounts of the fauna and flora encountered in his wanderings, leave one in a state of bewilderment and contusion.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.