'If Winter Comes,'

‘If Winter Comes,’ by A. S. M. Hutchinson. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1921. 12mo, pp. $2.00.

A HUNDRED and two years ago this autumn, in a wood near Florence, Shelley wrote his matchless ‘Ode to the West Wind.’ Like the ‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty ’ and ‘Adonais,’ it glows with unconquerable hope for the world. The poet sees the Wind as symbol of autumn and the dying year, but by the same token as promise of resurrection. The climax of the poem is ‘the trumpet of a prophecy’ —

‘O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?'

A century has passed, and now a modern of, the moderns takes up Shelley’s note, and Mr. Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson builds on the pregnant phrase, ‘ If Winter comes,’ a novel which may well live as long as the poem has lived. It is an artist’s book — its structure as close and exquisite as a flower, its humor pervasive, its character studies keen and varied, its personal note spicy and fresh, and, best of all, its dealing with the great fundamentals of life and death, of God and the soul, courageous, poignant, intuitive and nobly Christian.

Mr. Hutchinson tells us the story of a man — a plain man, English Lo the heart of him, honest, loyal, seeking not his own. He is married to the type of woman from which every youth may pray to he delivered. To her there was nothing mysterious in the world. ’One was born, one lived, one died. What was there odd about that?' A fine deed was fine precisely in proportion Lo the social position of the person who performed it. 4 As people are judged, she was entirely nice, entirely worthy, entirely estimable. But she had neither feelings of the mind nor of the heart but only of the five senses.’ For a man as deep of soul as Mark Sabre, to live with such a woman through the strain of a world war was of itself a tragedy.

But this is not the only test to which he is put. Two other women come into the picture — one his real mate, all t ruth and zeal and courage; the other a fair, clinging child, victim of the sin of another man, but east upon Sabre’s generosity, and shielded by him at hitter cost.

So ’the heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed’ the gallant hero of If Winter Comes. By virtue of his very unselfishness, his patriotism, his world-wide vision, he is tortured by life and war, and he issues from the furnace all pure gold — thrice refined. Of such stuff and by such means are real heroes made.

Let none suppose this hero a dull person, or the story of sainthood achieved a dreary tale. Rather, adventure most glorious! The end crowning the work, and both without spot or wrinkle! In this splendid fragment of human life Autumn dismantles her house solely to build it anew. We must not mistake her word. It is not, ‘Take down. It is done.’ It is,’Take down. It is heginning!’ The West Wind testifies of Nature’s sublime faith —

‘If Winter comes, can Spring he far behind?’

HRLOISE E. HERSEY.