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 then, while shadows ’round them gathered faster,

And as the firelight fell,

He read aloud the book wherein the Master

Had writ of “Little Nell.”

Perhaps ’twas boyish fancy,—for the reader

Was the youngest of them all,—

But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar

A silence seemed to fall.

The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,

Listened in every spray,