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 the stubborn horns are striking, through the crowded caravan.

Now the storm is down upon us—let the madden’d horses go!

We shall ride the living whirlwind, though a hundred leagues it blow!

Though the surgy manes should thicken, and the red eyes’ angry glare

Lighten round us as we gallop through the sand and rushing air!

Myriad hoofs will scar the prairie, in our wild, resistless race,

And a sound, like mighty waters, thunder down the desert space:

Yet the rein may not be tighten’d, nor the rider’s eye look back—

Death to him whose speed should slacken on the madden’d bison’s track!

Now the trampling herds are threaded, and the chase is close and warm