The quality of the story is dual. There is the fidelity to character which marks the true novelist, the resolute putting through of what these people, in contact with each other, will certainly bring about. That calls for courage! How severe the temptation to shirk an inevitable but bitter event! It is so easy to persuade yourself that this and that will not mean disaster, that such and such chemicals when joined need not explode, that oil and water will mix this once, that two and two may for the moment make five! Why must there be a blighting catastrophe? Why cannot a happy ending be a truthful ending? The answer is that sometimes it can, but when it can’t you mustn’t make it so. Miss Cather’s _O Pioneers!_ doesn’t try to.
The second aspect of this novel we have already named. It is cyclic, that is, it sums up an era. Such a quality always gives a book a historical value; where it is wedded to high fictional art, as here, the satisfaction of the reader is complete.
_The Song of the Lark_ gains over _O Pioneers!_ in the first place by its sheer bulk. _O Pioneers!_ was a series of scenes in a single but changing setting; to cover so much ground, in point of time, the author had to strip her action of all that was not indispensable. But as _The Song of the Lark_ is entirely centered about the development of a single person there is a chance to enrich the narrative with no end of detail; more, it is necessary to do so. For here we are trying to come at the innermost secret of Thea Kronberg, we are trying to find out what--_what_--it was in her that made her great. To get at that we must have exhaustively every item which can be made to contribute the least mite of information. We must have everything about her from her girlhood to her success on the New York stage, we must have all the persons who came in contact with her and who had their effect on her, or upon whom she had her effect, for it was generally that way about! We must have her as she appeared to each and every one of the few really privileged to know her. What they saw and said, the conclusions they drew, are the material from which we have to dig out the secret. And Miss Cather gives us all we need. She is replete with the facts and she puts them in their entirety before us. The result is a biography, no less; but a biography unencumbered with letters and irrelevant conversations and unimportant views and the unendurable conscientiousness of the faithfully recording friend.