Page:On Our Selection.djvu/253

 Such Is Cifc,

By Tom Coujns.

Such is Life is original in scheme. The author sets out with an unpremeditated purpose of amplifying the diary memoranda of one week, and his book naturally falls into seven chapters. The first date is taken at hazard, from a series of filled-up pocket diaries.

This random text introduces five typical bullock drivers, with three or four assorted nomads. The day is uneventful, but the night's camp (a risky grass-steal) is enlivened by Out-back topics. The scene is on the Lachlan plains.

Then, for sufficient reasons, the diary records cease to be consecu- tive, and are henceforth separated by monthly intervals. The scene of Chap. II is placed in the Lachlan-Darling scrub country, amongst station hands. Chap. Ill opens on the Murray, between Echuca and Albury. Chap. IV displays the Lower Lachlan, with actors proper to the scene; and Chap. V falls in an adjacent locality, with all accessories widely dissimilar. Chap. VI returns to the vicinity of Chap. I, but the aspect is squattocratic, not nomadic. Chap. VII is arbitrarily built on a date six or seven weeks subsequent to that of its forerunner, in order to serve as a sequel.

Underneath this obvious dislocation of anything resembling narrative run several undercurrents of plot, manifest to the reader, though ostensibly unnoticed by the author.

In cloth, decorated, 300 pp. Price. 4s. 6d.

maoriland, and Otfrer Verses.

By Arthur H. Adams.

Partial List of Contents.

Maoriland.

Maoriland

On the Plains

The Dwellings of Our

Dead Rain in the Bush The Storm and the

Bush The Coming of Te

Rauparaha Written in Australia The Brave Days to be

Love Motives.

To You

Lament

On the Sands

A Portrait

After Long Years

Blossom of Life

The Goal

The most

Grey Eyes

Just a Woman

Satana

A Woman's Farewell

And Yet ?

Sonnets.

A.D. 19 ?

My Land

Love and Life

The New Woman

Reminiscence

The Four Queens

(Maoriland) To My Love The Stars

The Girl at the Harp Sunset

The Perfect Present Lovers China, 1899

Antagonists Sydney

Morning Peace To One Slain in Absence

Other Verses.

Myself — My Song The Poet to be Yet Sydney Nocturnes; From the North Shore ; King Street ; In Hyde Park The Australian The Anarchist A Song of Failure The Garden of the Sea Bereft A Question Epitaph The Minstrel : A Drama

characteristic book of Maoriland verse. Buckram, gilt top, with portrait. Price, 5s.

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