Barry Pain has been so long before the public as a humourist that he almost begins to rank as classic. I 1s 30 years since he was delighting an undergraduate audience at Cambridge with The Muses Minus One." His humour indeed in comparison with more recent styles has still a flavour of those far off days, but it is none the less perennially fresh and charming and any book by him deserves and gets a huge number of readers. He has done nothing better than "Tf Summer Don't," in which the astute reader will at once discern parody on Mr, [utchirnson's world-famous novel. Every page is amusing and the icature of the dramatic personal is amazingly clever. By -the way, Mr, Barry Pain revives that ancient and one had thought obsolete form of humour, the pun, with excellent effect. At one point he introduces a@ piece of real criticism worth quoting. "Luke Sharper" has just been describing to. Mabel the story of Effie as it occurred in the real book and asks her opinion on it.
"Wouldn't it happen so? (he exclaims). Isnt it all absolutely inevitable."?
"Not absolutely," said Mabel." "The previous knowledge t hat one hus of you would go for something. There was never any sign of un attachment of that kind between you and Effie. If you had been the father of the child you would most certainly not have Jeff her alone, without any provision, the time the child was born. I should born. be quite certain of that. So would the two maids young Dol and_ failing ita te old Effie would apply to} Dobron. This is about the last house which she would come. Wer instinct would be to keep away from the neighbourhood where she was known.
If her} own father a reed to take her in, it's almost n that he would take the baby as well. Your ideas about that convention are exaggerated and old-fashioned. if she did come here, and you insisted on her staying, I should put up it, though I should not like it, until some arrangement could be made for her to go elsewhere with her child. And that arrangement centd be made easily wud quickly. I do not see why I should dismiss the maids, and if T did they are paid with your money. and are much more devoted to! you than they are to me. You would only have to' sp and they would j remain. No seducer would bring his victim and her'child to the house where his wife was living. You would be! thought quixotic bet not guilty. Effie saw that you were cut by every: body and that she had brought troubte} on yor, would be particularly carefal not zo cause more serious trouble committing suicide. And tted suicide, she would not implicate you in it by making you buy the poison. She would neither make fruit tart, nor clean a straw hat, because she simply would "not have the time. You don't' know much about Young babies, do you? I should not divorce you, ind should have no evidence on which I could get a divorce. Ini fact. the whole thing's skittles."?
The crisis of "If Winter Comes' thus expressed certainly does strike'
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.