the popular legend of the frontier, had come to feel that the "song of
emigration had been, in effect, the hymn of fugitives." Illusion no less
than reality had tempted Americans toward their far frontiers, and the
enormous mass, once under way, had rolled stubbornly westward, crushing
all its members who might desire to hesitate or to reflect.

The romancers had studied the progress of the frontier in the lives of
its victors; Mr. Garland studied it in the lives of its victims: the
private soldier returning drably and mutely from the war to resume his
drab, mute career behind the plow; the tenant caught in a trap by his
landlord and the law and obliged to pay for the added value which his
own toil has given to his farm; the brother neglected until his courage
has died and proffered assistance comes too late to rouse him; and
particularly the daughter whom a harsh father or the wife whom a brutal
husband breaks or drives away--the most sensitive and therefore the most
pitiful victims of them all. Mr. Garland told his early stories in the
strong, level, ominous language of a man who had observed much but chose
to write little. Not his words but the overtones vibrating through them
cry out that the earth and the fruits of the earth belong to all men and
yet a few of them have turned tiger or dog or jackal and snatched what
is precious for themselves while their fellows starve and freeze.
Insoluble as are the dilemmas he propounded and tense and unrelieved as
his accusations were, he stood in his methods nearer, say, to the humane
Millet than to the angry Zola. There is a clear, high splendor about his
landscapes; youth and love on his desolate plains, as well as anywhere,
can find glory in the most difficult existence; he might strip
particular lives relentlessly bare but he no less relentlessly clung to
the conviction that human life has an inalienable dignity which is
deeper than any glamor goes and can survive the loss of all its
trappings.