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

With my free hands and my manhood

Hilda’s peer am I.

---

THE GRAY SWAN.

(ALICE CARY.)

(From the Poetical Works of Alice and Phœbe Cary, 1876.)

H tell me, sailor, tell me true,

Is my little lad, my Elihu,

A-sailing with your ship?”