SOURCE: “Ridgely Torrence,” in The Younger American Poets, Little, Brown, and Company, 1913, pp. 299-314.

In the following excerpt, Rittenhouse extols Torrence's first book of poetry and his play El Dorado.

Mr. Ridgely Torrence, whose poetic drama, El Dorado, brought him generous recognition, gave earlier hostages to fame in the shape of a small volume with the caption, The House of a Hundred Lights, and gravely subtitled, “A Psalm of Experience after Reading a Couplet of Bidpai.”

Into this little book were packed some charming whimsicalities, together with some graver thoughts—though not too grave—and some fancies full tender. It had, however, sufficient resemblance to Omar Khayyám to bring it under a Philistine indictment, though its point of view was in reality very different. It was a clever bit of ruminating upon the Where and How and Why and Whence, without attempting to arrive at these mysteries...