Smith's book of war poetry titled The English Tongue was published in 1916 by the Four Seas Company.

[1] Smith's work was well-received and was often republished, but he lost much of his audience in the 1920s due to changing tastes and styles.

[5] The Inlander praised Smith's 1902 work The Writing of the Short Story for "applying formula and symbolic representation to such abstract things as visualization", although the reviewer criticized the book for not treating a short story as any different from a novel's structure.

[6] Educational Review stated that the book is great for teachers to use, but that the theory might be too much for non-psychology students.

[7] The book was reviewed favorably by The Chautauquan for not only how it helps people build short stories, but also how it included the psychology behind it.

[8] Gerald Stanley Lee said that "In the Furrow may not quite always satisfy the outer ear, but there is about it a kind of stern hardy singing that many of us have looked for in vain as of late.