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

You give it—I receive it, then,

Though rather for your sake than mine.

A long and honorable line

Is yours—the Peerage of the Pen,

Founded when this old world was young,

And need was to preserve for men

(Lost else) what had been said and sung,

Tales our forgotten fathers told,

Dimly remembered from of old,

Sonorous canticles and prayers,