Bibliography: Under Two Flags: A Story of the Household and the Desert by Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramee)

In an 1895 Courier article Cather writes: "Sometimes I wonder why God ever trusts talent in the hands of women, they usually make such an infernal mess of it. I think He must do it as a sort of ghastly joke. Really, it would be hard to find a better plot than is in that same Under Two Flags, and the book contains the rudiments of a great style, and it also contains some of the most driveling nonsense and mawkish sentimentality and contemptible feminine weakness to be found anywhere." Also mentioned: A Village Commune, Pascarel, Ariadne, Wanda, and Friendship; each has merits, but "I hate to read them."

In a 1901 Courier article, Cather writes of the works at the Chicago Art Institute that "there are hundreds of pictures there that the veriest Philistine can admire and, to a great extent, appreciate; people who read Under Two Flags and enjoy comic opera and ice cream soda."