Hamlin Garland has been almost as successful with his middle Northwest as Miss Wilkins has with her New England. His stories can not be called quaint, as hers can, nor sweet exactly; but they can be said to be as graphic, faithful, straightforward, homely, and to have been compiled with as patient and sympathetic an observation--not so minute, but as unerring. They are freer, bolder, more like the country he portrays. With Mr. Garland perhaps we have more of the out-of-doors, literal country, the black soil into which the people's lives are ploughed and from which they come out again sometimes at the top of the corn tassel. With Miss Wilkins the country is more that country not built with hands, eternal in characteristics. Of both writers the work is great work, and you can not go astray in taking either for your model. "Up the Coolly" is a remarkable tragedy--for tragedy it is. "The Return of the Private" is all too pathetically true. "Among the Corn Rows" is startlingly realistic, and "A Branch Road"--well, doubtless people have varying opinions about the usefulness of such pictures, but nobody can gainsay the excellence of the craftsmanship. [Bret Harte] In a somewhat different way, with just as much realism maybe, but surely with a large dash of romance, Bret Harte pre-empted California as a literary land two decades before these younger writers staked out their claims. "Tennessee's Partner" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" are perfect in their way, and their way is this way: the place-character narrative. [Suggestions and precautions]