Library of the best American literature / Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

by Unknown

And memory dim with dark oblivion joins;

Where woke the first remembered sounds that fell

Upon the ear in childhood’s early morn;

And, wandering thence along the rolling years,

I see the shadow of my former self

Gliding from childhood up to man’s estate;

The path of youth winds down through many a vale.

And on the brink of many a dread abyss,

From out whose darkness comes no ray of light,

Save that a phantom dances o’er the gulf