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

I reckon he never knowed how.

And this was all the religion he had—

To treat his engine well;

Never be passed on the river;

To mind the pilot’s bell;

And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire—

A thousand times he swore,

He’d hold her nozzle agin the bank

Till the last soul got ashore.

All boats has their day on the Mississip,