I have been up to this as objective as possible, sparing neither praise nor criticism to the present-day American novelists. I confess that the path I have followed has been rather arduous and not always leading to gardens of pleasure. American realism does not provide on the road artistic oases like Flaubert’s or Maupassant’s. The great Dreiserian desert or the Andersonian jungle are hard enough to travel through. The writers whom I have studied are more interesting for the subjects which they treat than for their style. As artists they are imperfect, one might be tempted to say uneducated. On the other hand, if I have been at all sedulous in depicting them, the reader will be struck with the unanimous character of their grievances. All of them almost ferociously criticize the social man; all have of American life a somewhat tragic opinion. The more optimistic among them feign to be ironical. Few show either pity or resignation. It was reserved for the women to soften this realism with a grain of human pathos. The novels of Miss Willa Cather and Zona Gale in particular are characterized by a profound feeling of sympathy towards the inhibited people of whom they write. Willa Cather, like James Branch Cabell, is from Virginia. As an analyst, she can be pitiless when occasion requires and she was so when she wrote “A Lost Lady.” This novel once again portrays an American Emma Bovary, buried in the grass of a small town. From adventure to adventure, from fall to fall, the Lost Lady ends up by marrying one of her servants. This book is rich in intuitions. Its gloomy atmosphere enhances the feeling of the tragedy of suppressed lives and the ensuing moral decadence. Disregarding the chronological order, this novel can be compared with a more recent work by the same author, “The Professor’s House.” It is again the story of a recluse. The composition of the book is not perfect. Being concerned primarily with faithfully representing people and their surroundings, the author deprived “The Professor’s House” of almost any plot. She appears to have hesitated between telling a story and drawing portraits. The book is interrupted in the middle by a lengthy digression. But the hero of the novel, Professor Saint Pierre, is an attractive figure.