SOURCE: "American Fiction Again," in Cosmopolitan, Vol. XII, No. 5, March, 1892, pp. 636-40.

Matthews was an influential American critic and educator of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In the following excerpt, he praises the insight and originality of Main-Travelled Roads, while noting several flaws in the collection.

Mr. Garland paints his pictures boldly; or rather should I call his work etching, vigorously done, with many a firm stroke, well bitten in the bath. These are rugged figures that he draws and the shadows they cast are grim and hard. The trouble with most of us men of letters is that we go on writing stories about ladies and gentlemen instead of telling the lives of men and women. It is the merit of Mr. Garland that he is able to interest us in the plain people, as Lincoln called them. It is the merit of Mr. Garland that he...