none the less true,--was, indeed, it seems to me, all the more true.
Therefore I say that his early death was a loss to American literature,
or, to speak more accurately, to that too small part of our literature
which concerns itself with American life. To him the hard-featured
Yankee had something besides hard features and ungainly manners; he saw
the better part as well as the grosser of the creature, and knew that

"Poor lone Hannah,
Sitting by the window, binding shoes,"

had somewhat besides coarse hands and red eyes. He was not tainted with
the vicious habit of caricature, which is the excuse with which
superficial and heartless writers impose their false art upon the
public. Nor did he need that his heroes should wear kid gloves,--though
he was himself the neatest-gloved man I knew. "Armstrong of Oregon" was
a rough figure enough; but how well he knew how to bring out the kindly
traits in that rude lumberman's character! how true to Nature is that
sketch of a gentleman in homespun! And even Jake Shamberlain, the Mormon
mail-carrier, a rollicking, untidy rover, fond of whiskey, and doubtless
not too scrupulous in a "trade," has yet, in Winthrop's story, qualities
which draw us to him.

To sit down to "John Brent" after rending one of the popular novels of
these days, by one of the class of writers who imagine photography the
noblest of arts, is like getting out of a fashionable "party" into the
crisp air of a clear, starlight, December night. And yet Winthrop was a
"society" man; one might almost say he knew that life better than the
other, the freer, the nobler, which he loved to describe, as he loved to
live it.