“The writings of Miss Ellen Glasgow have always possessed a unique and special charm for me that has carried me from one book to another for the pleasure derived from reading, with no special effort on my part to learn just why I enjoyed them. Last summer a man quoted in my presence a line of Miss Glasgow’s, something like this: ‘Not being able to give her the finer gift of the spirit, he loaded her with jewels.’
“My dictionary defines an epigram, ‘A bright or witty thought tersely and sharply expressed, often ending satirically.’ A saying like this almost reaches that level. At any rate, it stuck in my mind, and when a friend recently sent me a copy of Miss Glasgow’s latest book, I began reading it with the thought in mind that I would watch and see if she could say other things of like quality. My patience! She rolls them unendingly. Before I had read twenty pages I realized just where lay the charm that had always held me. It was not in plot, nor in character drawing, not in construction; it was in the woman expressing her own individuality with her pen. What a gift of expression she has! I know of no other woman and very few men who can equal her on this one point.
“Chesterton does the same thing, with a champagne sparkle and bubble, but I would hesitate to say that even he surpasses her, for while he is bubbling and sparkling on the surface, charming, alluring, holding one, she is down among the fibers of the heart, her bright brain and keen wit cutting right and left with the precision of a skilled surgeon. Not so witty, but fully as wise.
“You have only to read Virginia to convince yourself.
“‘Having married, they immediately proceeded, as if by mutual consent, to make the worst of it.’
“‘Having lived through the brief illumination of romance, she had come at last into that steady glow which encompasses the commonplace.’
“‘To demand that a pretty woman should possess the mental responsibility of a human being would have seemed an affront to his inherited ideas of gallantry.’
“‘If the texture of his soul was not finely wrought, the proportions of it were heroic.’
“‘From the day of his marriage he had never been able to deny her anything she had set her heart upon—not even the privilege of working herself to death for his sake when the opportunity offered.’
“‘You know how Abby is about men.’ ‘Yes, I know, and it’s just the way men are about Abby.’