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one powerful shipplnc f61llily the love o! Kate Fernald for Fortune a.a the · major themes. terwoven with them are minor themes-Jake, who typiflel! the new and persistently detennined ambition, which sees opportunity in the order of things and turns the rs to his own violation of profits, ruthless in ol\l. sentiments as in h s destrootion of old trees; the vlllage folks with their small gossip and narrow minds; the deferred romance ot. Rissa and Dick Halter, who must always be secondary to NM in Rissa's fierce and possessive devotion to her brother; the devotion of Sa111 Jordan to the Fortunes, turned to hatred and an obsession for l'Qvenge in a single night. All these are combined in one complex and baffling whole, tbru which one must seek to find the great, underlying harmony. And thru it all sounds the beat a.nd surge of the sea. It was that sa~e sea that inspired Nat to wrlte hlf great "Sea Symphony," altho It had nearly taken his life. The whole downfall of the Fortune family is encompassed in this story. Kate shows how it was due to the pride and stubbornness of the Major, whose presen;ee hung like a grim and threatenmg shadow over the carefree joyousnell8 ot childhood. In after rears Kate came to understand the nature of the man 'better and compassion was mingled with condemnation. His daughter, Rissa, never . forgave him, for what she cons,dered his heartlese cruelty to h~ brother, and, strangely enough: it was Kate the girl who came mto his home as the child 01' his housekeeper, who broug4t some measure of alleviation to his despair, when, with fortune dwindled, - health 11,D:d pride shattered, deserted bY his children-ships, forests, family, aU gone-he approached hi.!! mel1m. choly end. Major Fortune obstinately _blinded his eyes to all that he did not desire. Otherwise he would have seen the inevitable doom of the sailing vessel in time to have sav- , ed his fortune, and not defied ~he signs of the times and the advice of his best counsellors by investing huge sums in a new ship, surpassing any he had yet built-a. ship that brought him only b3:d luck. He w.ould have seen that h111 son, Nat was physica.lly and temperamentally · incapa,ble of carrying on -the Fortune traditions a.a a ruler of the sea. That life on board ship under a, rough and unfeeling commander like the hated Capt. MacMurty would crush him. Th~t I by refusing to indulge the hoy 1n his passion for music he was barring him from the only wa.y. by which he might gain the dlstmction and world-recognition the father craved for him, All these things were apparent to the clear-sighted Kate, whose sensibilities, oractical tho she was, were sha1·pened by love and sympathy.

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Passing of Maine Shipping Theme of Delightful Novel by Rachel Field, Summer Resident of Pine Tree St.ate Words of a reviewer fail to convey tbe charm ot Rachel Field's new novel, "Time Out of Mind, a.nd the hold it takes on the reader. Its charm is indefinable. The title conveys the atmosphere and the essence of the book. Natives of northern New England will recognize the expression at once. It was commonly used in all old families and it suggests things that have been a common part of life farther back than one can remember. It is used frequently by Kate, the character whom Rachel Field has made the chronicler of this story. Miss Field whose summers a.re spent in her island home near Mt. Desert, has absorbed the atmosphere and acquainted herself with the rich store of Maine coast lore to be found in that region. As in the case of other writers Miss Field appreciates the romance of Maine's shipping days and the tragedy its pa,ising brought into many lives. She has built her novel around it. That it finds response, not only in the hearts of Maine readers, but in readers all over the country 1s proven by the fact that since the first week the book went on sale it has had a place on the lists of the "Six best sellers" in fiction in all the large cities of the United States. It happens that this is the fourth outstanding novel within a year that has been inspired by the seafaring people of Maine. It is preceded by Kenneth Roberts' "Captain Caution," Mary Ellen Chase's Mary Peters" and Elaine Myers' "Loa,·es and Fishes." It is "Mary Peters" that is inevitably recalled iJl reading "Time Out of Mind" for Miss Chase, like Miss Field 'wove her tale around the displacerr'ient of sailing vessels by steam, the decay of the old shipyards and old families and the giving way of shipping to the summer resort business, and we ~ense that Miss Field, like Miss Chas(', recognizes a certain loss to the State and has a feeling of regret for it.

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In Kate Fernald Miss Field has created a character as strong and as admira,ble in her way as Mary Peters, a character so vital and so human that her appeal must be uni versal. We see her as she sees herself in retrospect, but we feel that the past which she recalls is much more real and alive to her than the present in which she lives, a spinster, in a degree of uninspiring and uneventful security thru her work at the village postoffice and the loyalty of a friend whom she once helped tJhru a difficult time of her life when friends were few. She is the only one living of those she loved and among whom she grew up in the stately mansion called Fortune's Folly, which lorded it over the rest of the community spread out below it and at a respectful distance.

RACHEL FIELD Author of "Time Out of Mind" ( Macmillan)

It is easy to lo cate Litt e rospect, which is not far froll?' the city of Rockland, but every little seaport town has at least one such old sea captain house as "Fortune's Folly," sitting in grandeur on an eminence overlooking the harbor, its white columns and cupola glistening aibove the greenery and bloom or its spacious gardens. There is one or more known by the name of "Folly," with accompanying traditions of the builder's extravagance and foolhardiness, but J it is not likely that the author borrowed one of these. "Fortune's Folly" had belonged to three generations of a family of shipbuilders, who had won distinction on the sea and In military service, when Kate came there to live and had it imp1·essed upon her that "there's no port too far for their Fol'tune's pines to cast shadows." Kate was the sturdy product of a hilly .Maine farm, a "Square-rigged girl, the Major pronounced, on his first sight of her, and Old Lady Phibben, who told fortunes with a cm·ious peb<ble which she called her "lucky stone," exclaimed over her unbroken lifeline and prophesied that she would keep her health thru thick and thin. Kate was ten when she came to Fo1·tune's Folly and she grew up in the companionship of the Major's children, Clarissa, a year older, and Nathaniel, a year younger than herself, acquiring some of tbeir genteel ways and refinements o! speech, tho she remained essentially a child of the earth with the nearness to nature and capacity for hard work that was the heritage of her country breeding.

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Music and art have their influelH:P on this story, whose development, s·ln form,, 11uggests a Fugue, I with the dis!'llte:g:t'l!,tmn of shipping l

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The character of Kate Fe,·nald was com})rehendingly portrayed by Haltet·, Dick her artist-friend, when he painted her beneath an apple-tree. He perceived her kinship with the apple, full-flavored, sound-hearted, wltlh the gold and rudd)' glow of tun development. Only Dick, it seema, knew how much Kate :tiad to give or how Iav• ish she would be with her gltts, asking nothing in refurn. The old fortune-telling woman expressed the same idea when she se.!d: "You've irot a heart that's bigger'n your lljlead, chtld. :. It's'""vride '·eriougir ·t«i·

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