“Dr. Dawson’s account of his quest for a simpler and more satisfactory life has in it nothing extreme, nothing so austere as to make the ordinary man draw back and doubt its wisdom.”
+ N. Y. Times. 11: 824. D. 1, ’06. 700w.
“These essays have distinction and grace of manner, and they also contain not a little of philosophical value as relates to the social civilization and social movement of our day.”
+ Outlook. 84: 385. O. 13, ’06. 170w.
Day, Holman Francis. [Squire Phin.] †$1.50. Barnes.
“Yet another story of Maine is ‘Squire Phin.’ His office was over Asa Brickett’s village store, and there and thereunder goes forward the chorus in this rustic melodrama. The protagonists, meanwhile, are variously occupied in practicing law, making love, adjusting quarrels, and preventing scandals, while over all is cast the limelight of burlesque by the return to his native town of the showman ... with chariots, parrot and elephant he shrieks and plunges and crashes through the story till, tired of his unchartered freedom, he sinks into the repose of wedlock.”—Nation.
“The dialect of this book touches deeper depths than even the usual New England coast story. The incidents bear the same enlarged relation as the dialect to the average village chronicle.”
+ Nation. 81: 488. D. 14, ’05. 270w.
“Rarely have we met a more amusing group of village sages.”