Conviction about the truth of life, conviction as to the best use of the novel, namely, “to present the great truths of life in an attractive manner, where they will reach the greatest number of people”--this sums up Harriet T. Comstock. How did she come to write _The Place Beyond the Winds_ which presents the question of eugenics and the ethics of silence on certain matters affecting marriage? Mrs. Comstock’s face saddens and she tells you: “I had a most unpleasant experience once. I happened to learn that the very attractive son of a dear friend of mine was totally unfit to marry the girl to whom he was engaged. I approached the young man, but found him obdurate; so, after a long mental and spiritual struggle, I revealed the facts to the girl’s mother. “It was the most trying experience of my life. Then the feeling came to me that I must write about it--must do my small part toward banishing the evil.” Exactly! There you have the idealist in action as well as in literature. It is perfectly plain what some people will think of Mrs. Comstock’s course; it is equally plain that hundreds of thousands will approve it. Do her the fine justice to acknowledge that whatever any one thought of it, that even if every one else in the world condemned her, she would have done as she did. She has, in a showdown, absolute and unlimited courage. Then and then only is her rooted modesty and her equally rooted humor put aside. As for the humor that is hers, it comes out fully in the narrative of her experiences campaigning for suffrage. As she once wrote: “And then the anti who became converted and in a burst of gratitude sent me a bottle of Benedictine! “Maybe she felt as the young girl at a revival once felt who electrified the congregation by shouting: “‘Good Lord! My jewelry is dragging me down to hell--I am going to give it to my sister!’” Go out to Flatbush, as Alice Lawton did one sunshiny afternoon, afterward relating her experience in the _Book News Monthly_; travel along a “broad, tree-shaded street between rows of real homes with full complement of flower gardens and babies and puppies; stop at a pretty, wide-verandaed, white-pillared house and call upon Mrs. Comstock, wife, mother, home-maker, novelist--a Jill of many trades and successful at them all!” She seats you in a “cozy, brown-walled drawing-room, beside a little round table.” You eat “piping hot buttered toast and crisp jumbles, and drink properly-brewed tea. Sonny comes strolling in, a large, beautifully-marked Burne-Jonesy yellow cat,” a Persian. The creature is polite but heads for a little mahogany desk and sniffs at the single drawer. It contains his catnip. The hostess is the sort of woman you make confidences to. Mrs. Comstock is cheerful, “has smiling eyes, a loving-toned voice, curly gray hair, wears pretty clothes and almost always flowers. One feels a hearty welcome even when one telephones her. She never sounds annoyed, nor even interrupted.”