In 1926 Freeman received the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for distinction in fiction. Presenting the medal, Hamlin Garland commended this woman, then in her seventies, for having created "unfaltering portraits of lorn widowhood, crabbed age, wistful youth, cheerful drudgery, patient poverty, defiant spinsterhood, and many other related and individual types of character ... all making an unparalleled record of New England life...." But she also expressed in her writing the beauty of the New England landscape that is never far removed as a solace to the suffering of the Calvinist soul. As Caleb's son, Barney, grieves for his lost love, he turns to New England earth for comfort: "Barney began sobbing and crying like a child as he lay there; he moved his arms convulsively and tore up handfuls of young grass and leaves and flung them away in the unconscious gesturing of grief.... He started off with a great stride, and then he stopped short and flung an arm around the slender trunk of a white birch tree and pulled it against him as if it were Charlotte and laid his cheek on the cool white bark and sobbed again like a girl.
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