N. Y. Tribune: "The weakness of Riley was, and is, a prime weakness of American thought. He wrote not the truth of life but a practical [sweetened] version of it, suffused with easy conventional emotion. Such things as doubt, ugliness of sin not only have scant place in such writing, even by way of artistic contrast; they have in share in the molding of the goodness which is upheld before us. It the truth that alone makes any people free. Therefore noble things that Riley wrote of would have been far finer, far nobler, had they touched life and reality rather than conventional tear-ducts."
