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

The present is enough for common souls,

Who, never looking forward, are indeed

Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age

Are petrified forever: better those

Who lead the blind old giant by the hand

From out the pathless desert where he gropes,

And set him onward in his darksome way.

I do not fear to follow out the truth,

Albeit along the precipice’s edge.

Let us speak plain: there is more force in names