SOURCE: A review of “Arizona,” in The North American Review, Vol. 122, March, 1901, pp. 472-74.

In the following excerpt, Howells praises Thomas for his skill as a dramatist, and particularly for his ability to construct plot and to render details authentically.

If Mr. Thomas could have marked more distinctly his own sense of the fallacious sentimentality which actuates the hero of his Arizona, he would have saved me from much the same discomfort I suffered in seeing Mr. Herne's Sag Harbor. But, apparently, he could not find the moment to take that mistaken young man aside and say to him, in the hearing of the audience, “Now, go on if you must, and sacrifice your good name to save from public dishonor a woman who has dishonored herself by consenting to leave her husband for her lover. Be scorned by her husband as a thief; suffer yourself to be...