[In the following excerpt, a reviewer warmly praises Guest's verse.]

There is one glory of the new poetry, and another of the old-fashioned sort, and another (it may be) of the kind that is neither poetry nor prose; for one form of verse differeth from another in glory. Without instituting invidious comparisons, one may heartily commend the style of verse that flows so readily from the pen of Mr. Edgar A. Guest, and one may at the same time rejoice that he has found leisure to provide rhymes for all his lines. He chooses the old familiar themes of domestic joys and sorrows, the ups and downs of life, the high hopes and the grievous disappointments common to our lot. Those who like Will Carleton and James Whitcomb Riley will not dislike Mr. Guest. His book, A Heap o' Livin' is by no means his first appearance in print, and to his old friends he needs no introduction. Let those who still have before them the pleasure of making his acquaintance try his quality in such poems of the present collection as "My Creed," "Spring in the Trenches," "The Other Fellow," "Father," and "Mother." The verses entitled "Canning Time" are savory of the autumn's fruitage. "Opportunity" surpasses the well-known older poem of the same name in that the knock at one's door is, with truth, represented as not a single and never-to-be-repeated summons. "At Sugar Camp" disappoints the New England reader in giving no hint of the sweet delights of maple-sugar making, though the glad freedom of the return to nature and the simple life is well depicted. Here and there the book shows a limping line, perhaps not oftener than in many a greater poet, but in some instances the limp could easily have been cured. In a writer so much to one's liking even slight blemishes cause regret.