The New York herald., 1921-05-08


TT column of type could be concentrated
into a sentence that should compel the
1 reader to go to the book itself in place
of any review that sentence would be writ
ten here. Green Apple Harvest" is not a
literary topic to be argued about. Read it.
hear its music. breathe its air, live in its
life.
Sheila Kaye Smith has rooted her trees in
the earth of Thomas Hardy but they grow
up into the sunshine. Her central figure
walks among living men and women as
human they, but always a little sep
arate. He is Bunyan's Pilgrim, he is the
soul of man pursued by the eternal spirit
in Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven"
But there is nothing vague mystical in
the straightforward narrative.
Here is written the chronicle of a family
of a countryside, of world. 1t has the so
lidity cf single rock. There is irrele-
vance, intrusion And the complete
knowledge of the whole is conveyed to the
reader by way of his own heart.
Robert Fuller is first seen through the
eyes of Glenn his admiring and often shocked
younger brother. The relation between
these two is beautifully developed through
out the years. Glen is the steady, obedient
homestaying lad, though by means weak
The older. the prodgal-stormy, self willed
and self-tortured He is incurable lover;
but all his life long no other woman took the
place of Hannah Iden, the gypsy. When
Glenn asked him about her he famed out:
rs she sweet? Is the fire sweet? Is the
winter sweet? Reckon you don't know
naun cf love. There's a kind woi
makes your heart like broaken stone.
Hannah wurnt born to make men
happy-she wur born to make them men,"
He realized that even though she gave
herself to him for a time she did not really
return his love- For she had mo essential
tenderness which he could entreat. Such
softness as she had was all on the surface.
as the earth bears the loam and the clay
over the hard rocks.
There was poetry in his thought of her
long after they had separated.
His memories grew in the pale light
sharp, regretful things on which the tears
hung like rain on thorns. They were mem
ories of this lane, of walks in it long ago
when, with his arm round her waist and
her head against his shoulder, they had wan
dered up Silver Hill in the reddening twi-
light of the young moon, or had seen the
brownish gleam of the harvest fields be-
yond the hedge, while the dusk slowly
dredged the earth of light and split it In
glowing sparks about the sky. He could
feel her breath on his cheek, feel the warmth
OF her against his arm thrust under her
shawl and hear her loving words that were
so few"
And later, even when he saw her
changed and coarsened, her eyes yet held
their old magic-"those shining, dark
greedy eyes, more the eyes of an animal
than os a human being, since their beauty
and their wildness seemed to have no roots
in a human heart, but to belong to some
irnpersonal quality of the wild and harsh
and lovely earth, of nature in some petty.
savage mood. when she strews the ditch
with little corpses. There nothing
big nor yet so little as humanity in Han
nah"
One does not feel that Fuller took religion
as a substitute for the human happiness he
could not win. Yet he was the lover in his
worship, like David in the Psalms, and the
glory of his experience was lyric
"Often when he out at work he would
feel, as he told Clem If bucket Of ligh.
had been upset over him, and, still grasping
his spade the handle of his plough, he
would fall on his knees and give himself