THE EVERLASTING BOY Mitten Island is a place of fine weather, its air is always like stained glass between you and perfection.

Always you will find in the happy ways of Mitten Island a confidence that the worst is left behind, and that even the worst was not so very bad.

You can afford to remember the winter, for even the winter was beautiful; you can smile in the sun and think of the grey flush that used to overspread the island under its urgent crises of snow, and it seems that always there was joy running quickly behind the storms, joy looking with the sun through a tall window in a cloud.

Even the most dreadful curtain of a winter's day was always drawn up at sunset; its straight edge rose slowly, disclosing flaming space, and the dramatic figures of the two island churches, exulting and undying martyrs in the midst of flames.
It is a place of fine weather, and this is a book of fine weather, a book written in Spring.

I will not remember the winter and the rain.