Yet even among such pitiful surroundings Mr. Anderson walks tenderly. He honors youth, he feels beauty, he understands virtue, he trusts wisdom, when he comes upon them. He broods over his creatures with affection, though he makes no luxury of illusions. Much as he has detached himself from the cult of the village, he still cherishes the memories of some specific Winesburg. Much as he has detached himself from the hazy national optimism of an elder style in American thinking, he still cherishes a confidence in particular persons. _Winesburg, Ohio_ springs from the more intimate regions of his mind and is consequently more humane and less doctrinaire than his earlier novels. It has a similar superiority over the book he wrote for 1920, _Poor White_, which returns to the device of a bewildered strong man rising from a dull obscurity, successful but unsatisfied. At the same time _Poor White_ proceeds from an imagination which had been warmed with the creation of Winesburg and its people and is richer, fuller, deeper than the angular sagas of McPherson and McGregor. It does not yet show that Mr. Anderson can construct a large plot or that his vision comes with a steady gleam; it shows, rather, that he is still fumbling in the confusion of current life to get hold of something true and simple and to make it clear. Perhaps he tried in _Poor White_ to manipulate a larger bulk than he is yet ready for. Perhaps because he was aware of that he has worked in his latest book, _The Triumph of the Egg_, with a variety of brief themes and has excelled even _Winesburg_ in both poetry and truth. At least it is certain that he keeps on advancing in his art. Although life has not hardened for him, and he sees it still flowing or whirling, he steadily sharpens his outlines and perfects the fierce intensity of his style. Will his wisdom ever catch up with his passion and his observation? In each successive book he has revealed himself as still hot with the fever of his day's experiences. He has yet to show that he can go through the confusion of new spiritual adventures and then set them down, remembering, in tranquillity. _E.W. Howe_