Mitch Miller’s story is told by his friend Skeeters Kirby. It is a story of boys and a boy’s town written for adults. Mitch has read “Tom Sawyer” and Tom is to him a living personality. The two boys hunt for buried treasure and try to repeat all of Tom’s exploits. They dig for treasure in Old Salem where Lincoln lived, and an old man who knew Lincoln talks to them of a different kind of treasure. They run away intending to visit Tom Sawyer but are brought back home. Later their fathers take them on a journey to Hannibal, Missouri, where they meet life’s first disillusionment. Mitch is something of a dreamer and a poet. He is killed stealing rides on the cars, and in the epilogue, written thirty years after, the author can say that he is now glad that his chum did not live to face the shattered idealism of the present day.
+ Booklist 17:72 N ’20
“The best boy’s story in our generation of American authors has been written by Mr Masters in ‘Mitch Miller.’” W: S. Braithwaite
+ Boston Transcript p5 O 9 ’20 1500w
“Those who have neatly ticketed Mr Edgar Lee Masters as a cynic will be obliged after reading ‘Mitch Miller,’ to change their label—if they must have labels. There is, to be sure, a sub-acid quality in the epilogue. But the mood of the book is one of dedication rather than of challenge. Its tone is sunny and fresh and sweet; its beauty quiet and unobtrusive. ‘Mitch Miller’ comes close to being a masterpiece with its breadth of interpretation, and the fineness and singleness of its mood. It is complete, even to the tragedy at the end.” C. M. R.
+ Freeman 2:214 N 10 ’20 250w
“The narrative is tangled in a snarl of moods. Its movement is often thick, its wings gummed and heavy. Only in flashes does the powerful imagination of Mr Masters shake itself free and burn with the high, hot light which so often glows in the ‘Anthology.’ There are touches of admirable comedy and strong strokes of character and some racy prose; but as a whole ‘Mitch Miller’ falls regrettably between the clear energy which might have made it popular and the profound significance which might have made it great.” C. V. D.
+ − Nation 111:566 N 17 ’20 480w
“If fidelity to nature were the whole of art, Mitch Miller would be a perfect book, or almost perfect.... The defect in the author’s method comes out in the end of the book.... Is there nothing in American life significant and interesting enough to make it worth while for a boy like Mitch to grow up? Perhaps there is not; but if that is true, it is an artistic problem to be faced, not evaded through a petulant dismantling of a stage well set.” Alvin Johnson