"A Book of True Lovers"... Here is not only literary workmanship of a very high quality, but a healthful and hopeful-interpretation of the unpowdered, unpainted, and unspoiled ‘common people,’ full of genuine humor, pathos, sentiment, and feeling.
Such stories as 'The Strike at Glasscock’s,' 'The Judgment on Mrs. Swift,' and 'Abbylonia’s Surrender' are good tonics for the reader who sometimes wonders whether common honesty and the plain virtues are going to decay. It is characteristic of Octave Thanet's work that it confirms the judgment of such straightforward philosophers as Abraham Lincoln, who believed that the American nation derives its energy, vitality, and power, not from the ‘smart set,’ but from the plain people.”
