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 Choice Selections from Eminent Writers
PART  1. GREAT POETS OF AMERICA

        2. OUR MOST NOTED NOVELISTS

        3. FAMOUS WOMEN NOVELISTS

        4. REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN POETS OF AMERICA

        5. WELL-KNOWN ESSAYISTS, CRITICS AND SKETCH WRITERS

        6. GREAT AMERICAN HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS

        7. OUR NATIONAL HUMORISTS

        8. POPULAR WRITERS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

        9. NOTED JOURNALISTS AND MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTORS

       10. GREAT ORATORS AND POPULAR LECTURERS

       11. FAMOUS WOMEN ORATORS AND REFORMERS

       12. MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES AND CHOICE GEMS




                ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.


_Our obligation_ to the following publishers is respectfully and
gratefully acknowledged, since, without the courtesies and assistance
of these publishers and a number of the living authors, it would have
been impossible to issue this volume.

Copyright selections from the following authors are used by the
permission of and special arrangement with _MESSRS. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN
& CO._, their authorized publishers:;;Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry W.
Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor,
Maurice Thompson, Colonel John Hay, Bret Harte, William Dean Howells,
Edward Bellamy, Charles Egbert Craddock (Miss Murfree), Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps (Ward), Octave Thanet (Miss French), Alice Cary, Ph;be
Cary, Charles Dudley Warner, E. C. Stedman, James Parton, John Fiske
and Sarah Jane Lippincott.

_TO THE CENTURY CO._, we are indebted for selections from Richard
Watson Gilder, James Whitcomb Riley and Francis Richard Stockton.

_TO CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS_, for extracts from Eugene Field.

_TO HARPER & BROTHERS_, for selections from Will Carleton, General Lew
Wallace, W. D. Howells, Thomas Nelson Page, John L. Motley, Charles
Follen Adams and Lyman Abbott.

_TO ROBERTS BROTHERS_, for selections from Edward Everett Hale, Helen
Hunt Jackson, Louise Chandler Moulton and Louisa M. Alcott.

_TO ORANGE, JUDD & CO._, for extracts from Edward Eggleston.

_TO DODD, MEAD & CO._, for selections from E. P. Roe, Marion Harland
(Mrs. Terhune), Amelia E. Barr and Martha Finley.

_TO D. APPLETON & CO._, for Wm. Cullen Bryant and John Bach McMaster.

_TO MACMILLAN & CO._, for F. Marion Crawford.

_TO HORACE L. TRAUBEL_, Executor, for Walt Whitman.

_TO ESTES & LAURIAT_, for Gail Hamilton (Mary Abigail Dodge).

_TO LITTLE, BROWN & CO._, for Francis Parkman.

_TO FUNK & WAGNALLS_, for Josiah Allen’s Wife (Miss Holley).

_TO LEE & SHEPARD_, for Yawcob Strauss (Charles Follen Adams), Oliver
Optic (William T. Adams) and Mary A. Livermore.

_TO J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO._, for Bill Nye (Edgar Wilson Nye).

_TO GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS_, for Uncle Remus (Joel C. Harris).

_TO TICKNOR & CO._, for Julian Hawthorne.

_TO PORTER & COATES_, for Edward Ellis and Horatio Alger.

_TO WILLIAM F. GILL & CO._, for Whitelaw Reid.

_TO C. H. HUDGINS & CO._, for Henry W. Grady.

_TO THE “COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE,”_ for Julian Hawthorne.

_TO T. B. PETERSON & BROS._, for Frances Hodgson Burnett.

_TO JAS. R. OSGOOD & CO._, for Jane Goodwin Austin.

_TO GEO. R. SHEPARD_, for Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

_TO J. LEWIS STACKPOLE_, for John L. Motley.

Besides the above, we are under special obligation to a number of
authors who kindly furnished, in answer to our request, selections
which they considered representative of their writings.




  Illustration:            American Authors
           Hawthorne • Cooper • H. B. Stowe • Prescott • Irving


                INTRODUCTION.

“THE ink of a Nation’s Scholars is more sacred than the blood of its
martyrs,”;;declares Mohammed. It is with this sentence in mind, and
a desire to impress upon our fellow countrymen the excellence, scope
and volume of American literature, and the dignity and personality
of American authorship, that this work has been prepared and is now
offered to the public.

The volume is distinctly American, and, as such it naturally appeals
to the patriotism of Americans. Every selection which it contains
was written by an American. Its perusal, we feel confident, will
both entertain the reader and quicken the pride of every lover of his
country in the accomplishments of her authors.

European nations had already the best of their literature before
ours began. It is less than three hundred years since the landing
of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock, and the planting of a colony at
Jamestown, marked the first permanent settlements on these shores. Two
hundred years were almost entirely consumed in the foundation work of
exploring the country, settling new colonies, in conflicts with the
Indians, and in contentions with the mother country. Finally;;after
two centuries;;open war with England served the purpose of bringing
the jealous colonists together, throwing off our allegiance to Europe,
and, under an independent constitution, of introducing the united
colonists;;now the _United States of America_;;into the sisterhood of
nations.

Thus, it was not until the twilight of the eighteenth century that
we had an organized nationality, and it was not until the dawn of
the nineteenth that we began to have a literature. Prior to this we
looked abroad for everything except the products of our soil. Neither
manufacturing nor literature sought to raise its head among us. The
former was largely prohibited by our generous mother, who wanted
to make our clothes and furnish us with all manufactured articles;
literature was frowned upon with the old interrogation, “Who reads
an American book?” But simultaneously with the advent of liberty upon
our shores was born the spirit of progress;;at once enthroned and
established as the guardian saint of American energy and enterprise.
She touched the mechanic and the hum of his machinery was heard
and the smoke of his factory arose as an incense to her, while our
exhaustless stores of raw materials were transformed into things of
use and beauty; she touched the merchant and the wings of commerce
were spread over our seas; she touched the scholar and the few
institutions of learning along the Atlantic seaboard took on new life
and colleges and universities multiplied and followed rapidly the
course of civilization across the mountains and plains of the West.

But the spirit of progress did not stop here. Long before that time
Dr. Johnson had declared, “The chief glory of every people arises from
its authors,” and our people had begun to realize the force of the
truth, which Carlyle afterwards expressed, that “A country which has
no national literature, or a literature too insignificant to force
its way abroad, must always be to its neighbors, at least in every
important spiritual respect, an unknown and unesteemed country.” The
infant nation had now begun its independent history. Should it also
have an independent literature; and if so, what were the bases for
it? The few writers who had dared to venture into print had dealt with
European themes, and laid their scenes and published their books in
foreign lands. What had America, to inspire their genius?

The answer to this question was of vital importance. Upon it depended
our destiny in literature. It came clear and strong. To go elsewhere
were to imitate the discontented and foolish farmer who became
possessed of a passion for hunting diamonds, and, selling his farm for
a song, spent his days in wandering over the earth in search of them.
The man who bought this farm found diamonds in the yard around the
house, and developed that farm into _the famous Golconda mines_. The
poor man who wandered away had acres of diamonds at home. They were
his if he had but been wise enough to gather them.

So was America a rich field for her authors. Nature nowhere else
offered such inspiration to the poet, the descriptive and the
scientific writer as was found in America. Its mountains were the
grandest; its plains the broadest; its rivers the longest; its lakes
were inland seas; its water-falls were the most sublime; its caves
were the largest and most wonderful in the world; its forests bore
every variety of vegetable life and stretched themselves from ocean to
ocean; it had a soil and a climate diversified and varied beyond that
of any other nation; birds sang for us whose notes were heard on no
other shores; we had a fauna and a flora of our own. For the historian
there was the aboriginal red man, with his unwritten past preserved
only in tradition awaiting the pen of the faithful chronicler; the
Colonial period was a study fraught with American life and tradition
and no foreigner could gather its true story from the musty tomes
of a European library; the Revolutionary period must be recorded by
an American historian. For the novelist and the sketch writer our
magnificent land had a rich legendary lore, and a peculiarity of
manners and customs possessed by no other continent. The story of its
frontier, with a peculiar type of life found nowhere else, was all its
own.

It was to this magnificent prospect, with its inspiring possibilities
that Progress,;;the first child of liberty;;stood and pointed as she
awoke the slumbering genius of independent American Authorship, and,
placing the pen in her hand bade her write what she would. Thus the
youngest aspirant in literature stood forth with the freest hand, in a
country with its treasures of the past unused, and a prospective view
of the most magnificent future of the nations of earth.

What a field for literature! What an opportunity it offered! How well
it has been occupied, how attractive the personality, how high the
aims, and how admirable the methods of those who have done so, it is
the province of this volume to demonstrate. With this end in view, the
volume has been prepared. It has been inspired by a patriotic pride
in the wonderful achievement of our men and women in literature, in
making America, at the beginning of her second century as a nation,
the fair and powerful rival of England and Continental Europe in the
field of letters.

Wonderful have been the achievements of Americans as inventors,
mechanics, merchants;;indeed, in every field in which they have
contended;;but we are prepared to agree with Dr. Johnson that “The
chief glory of a nation is its authors;” and, with Carlyle, that they
entitle us to our greatest respect among other nations. The reading
of the biographies and extracts herein contained should impress
the reader with the debt of gratitude we as a people owe to those
illustrious men and women, who, while wreathing their own brows with
chaplets of fame, have written the name, “_America_,” high up on the
literary roll of honor among the greatest nations of the world.




  Illustration: THE POETS OF NEW ENGLAND


           THE DISTINCTIVE PURPOSE AND PLAN OF THIS VOLUME.


THIS work has been designed and prepared with a view to presenting an
outline of American literature in such a manner as to stimulate a love
for good reading and especially to encourage the study of the lives
and writings of our American authors. The plan of this work is unique
and original, and possesses certain helpful and interesting features,
which;;so far as we are aware;;have been contemplated by no other
single volume.

The first and main purpose of the work is to present to our American
homes a mass of wholesome, varied and well-selected reading matter.
In this respect it is substantially a volume for the family. America
is pre-eminently a country of homes. These homes are the schools of
citizenship, and;;next to the Bible, which is the foundation of our
morals and laws;;we need those books which at once entertain and
instruct, and, at the same time, stimulate patriotism and pride for
our native land.

This book seeks to meet this demand. Four-fifths of our space is
devoted exclusively to American literature. Nearly all other volumes
of selections are made up chiefly from foreign authors. The reason for
this is obvious. Foreign publications until within the last few years
have been free of copyright restrictions. Anything might be chosen
and copied from them while American authors were protected by law
from such outrages. Consequently, American material under forty-two
years of age could not be used without the consent of the owner of
the copyright. The expense and the difficulty of obtaining these
permissions were too great to warrant compilers and publishers in
using American material. The constantly growing demand, however, for
a work of this class has encouraged the publishers of this volume
to undertake the task. The publishers of the works from which these
selections are made and many living authors represented have been
corresponded with, and it is only through the joint courtesy and
co-operation of these many publishers and authors that the production
of this volume has been made possible. Due acknowledgment will be
found elsewhere. In a number of instances the selections have been
made by the authors themselves, who have also rendered other valuable
assistance in supplying data and photographs.

The second distinctive point of merit in the plan of the work is the
_biographical feature_, which gives the story of each author’s life
separately, treating them both personally and as writers. Longfellow
remarked in “Hyperion”;;“If you once understand the character of
an author the comprehension of his writings becomes easy.” He might
have gone further and stated that when we have once read the life of
an author his writings become the more interesting. Goethe assures
us that “Every author portrays himself in his works even though it
be against his will.” The patriarch in the Scriptures had the same
thought in his mind when he exclaimed “Oh! that mine enemy had written
a book.” Human nature remains the same. Any book takes on a new phase
of value and interest to us the moment we know the story of the writer,
whether we agree with his statements and theories or not. These
biographical sketches, which in every case are placed immediately
before the selections from an author, give, in addition to the story
of his life, a list of the principal books he has written, and the
dates of publication, together with comments on his literary style
and in many instances reviews of his best known works. This, with the
selections which follow, established that necessary bond of sympathy
and relationship which should exist in the mind of the reader between
every author and his writings. Furthermore, under this arrangement the
biography of each author and the selections from his works compose a
complete and independent chapter in the volume, so that the writer may
be taken up and studied or read alone, or in connection with others in
the particular class to which he belongs.

This brings us to the third point of _classification_. Other volumes
of selections;;where they have been classified at all;;have usually
placed selections of similar character together under the various
heads of Narrative and Descriptive, Moral and Religious, Historical,
etc. On the contrary, it has appeared to us the better plan in the
construction of this volume to classify the authors, rather than, by
dividing their selections, scatter the children of one parent in many
different quarters. There has been no small difficulty in doing this
in the cases of some of our versatile writers. Emerson, for instance,
with his poetry, philosophy and essays, and Holmes, with his wit and
humor, his essays, his novels and his poetry. Where should they be
placed? Summing them up, we find their writings;;whether written in
stanzas of metred lines or all the way across the page, and whether
they talked philosophy or indulged in humor;;were predominated by
the spirit of poetry. Therefore, with their varied brood, Emerson
and Holmes were taken off to the “Poet’s Corner,” which is made all
the richer and more enjoyable by the variety of their gems of prose.
Hence our classifications and groupings are as _Poets_, _Novelists_,
_Historians_, _Journalists_, _Humorists_, _Essayists_, _Critics_,
_Orators_, etc., placing each author in the department to which he
most belongs, enabling the reader to read and compare him in his best
element with others of the same class.

_Part I., “Great Poets of America,”_ comprises twenty of our most
famous and popular writers of verse. The work necessarily begins with
that immortal “Seven Stars” of poesy in the galaxy of our literary
heavens;;Bryant, Poe, Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier, Holmes and Lowell.
Succeeding these are those of lesser magnitude, many of whom are
still living and some who have won fame in other fields of literature
which divides honors with their poetry. Among these are Bayard Taylor,
the noted traveler and poet; N. P. Willis, the most accomplished
magazinist of his day; R. H. Stoddard, the critic; Walt Whitman;
Maurice Thompson, the scientist; Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Richard
Watson Gilder, editors, and Colonel John Hay, politician and statesman.
The list closes with that notable group of well-known Western poets,
James Whitcomb Riley, Bret Harte, Eugene Field, Will Carleton, and
Joaquin Miller.

The remaining nine parts of the book treat in similar manner
about seventy-five additional authors, embracing noted novelists,
representative women poets of America; essayists, critics and sketch
writers; great American historians and biographers; our national
humorists; popular writers for young people; noted journalists and
magazine contributors; great orators and popular lecturers. Thus, it
will be seen that in this volume the whole field of American letters
has been gleaned to make the work the best and most representative of
our literature possible within the scope of a single volume.

In making a list of authors in whom the public were sufficiently
interested to entitle them to a place in a work like this, naturally
they were found to be entirely too numerous to be all included in one
book. The absence of many good names from the volume is, therefore,
explained by the fact that the editor has been driven to the necessity
of selecting, first, those whom he deemed pre-eminently prominent, and,
after that, making room for those who best represent a certain class
or particular phase of our literature.

To those authors who have so kindly responded to our requests for
courtesies, and whose names do not appear, the above explanation
is offered. The omission was imperative in order that those treated
might be allowed sufficient space to make the work as complete and
representative as might be reasonably expected.

Special attention has been given to _illustrations_. We have inserted
portraits of all the authors whose photographs we could obtain, and
have, also, given views of the homes and studies of many. A large
number of special drawings have also been made to illustrate the text
of selections. The whole number of portraits and other illustrations
amount to nearly one hundred and fifty, all of which are strictly
illustrative of the authors or their writings. None are put in as mere
ornaments. We have, furthermore, taken particular care to arrange a
number of special groups, placing those authors which belong in one
class or division of a class together on a page. One group on a page
represents our greatest poets; another, well-known western poets;
another, famous historians; another, writers for young people; another,
American humorists, etc. These groups are all arranged by artists
in various designs of ornamental setting. In many cases we have also
had special designs made by artists for commemorative and historic
pictures of famous authors. These drawings set forth in a pictorial
form leading scenes in the life and labors of the author represented.




  Illustration: THE NEW CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY, WASHINGTON, D. C.


                TABLE OF CONTENTS.


  WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
    ; An Author at Fourteen
    ; The Influence of his Father
    ; Bryant’s Best Known Poems
    ; Personal Appearance
    ; A Long and Useful Life
    ; ‘Thanatopsis’
    ; ‘Waiting By the Gate
    ; ‘Blessed are They That Mourn’
    ; ‘Antiquity of Freedom’
    ; ‘To a Water Fowl’
    ; ‘Robert of Lincoln’
    ; ‘Drought’
    ; ‘The Past’
    ; ‘The Murdered Traveler’
    ; ‘The Battle-Field’
    ; ‘The Crowded Street’
    ; ‘Fitz Greene Halleck (Notice of)’
    ; ‘A Corn-Shucking in South Carolina’

  EDGAR ALLEN POE.
    ; Comparison with Other American Poets
    ; Place of Birth and Ancestry
    ; Career as a Student
    ; The Sadness of his Life and Its Influence Upon his Literature
    ; Conflicting Statements of his Biographers
    ; Great as a Story Writer and as a Poet
    ; His Literary Labors and Productions
    ; ‘The City in the Sea’
    ; ‘Annabel Lee’
    ; ‘To Helen’
    ; ‘Israfel’
    ; ‘To One in Paradise’
    ; ‘Lenore’
    ; ‘The Bells’
    ; ‘The Raven’

  HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
    ; His Place in Literature
    ; Comparison With American and English Poets
    ; His Education, Collegemates and Home
    ; His Domestic Life. His Poems
    ; Prose Works and Translations
    ; The Wayside Inn (A view of)
    ; His Critics, Poe, Margaret Fuller, ;Duyckinck

        ; ‘Duyckink’ replaced with ‘Duyckinck’

    ; Longfellow’s Genius
    ; ‘The Psalm of Life’
    ; ‘The Village Blacksmith’
    ; ‘The Bridge’
    ; ‘Resignation’
    ; ‘God’s Acre’
    ; ‘Excelsior’
    ; ‘The Rainy Day’
    ; ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’
    ; ‘The Old Clock On the Stairs’
    ; ‘The Skeleton in Armour’
    ; ‘King Witlaf’s Drinking Horn’
    ; ‘Evangeline On the Prairie’
    ; ‘Literary Fame (Prose)’

  RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
    ; The Difficulty of Classifying Emerson
    ; The Liberator of American Letters
    ; A Master of Language
    ; Emerson and Franklin
    ; Birth, Education, Early Life
    ; Home at Concord, Brook-Farm Enterprise
    ; Influence on Other Writers
    ; Modern Communism and the New Theology
    ; ‘Hymn Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument (1836)’
    ; ‘The Rhodora’
    ; ‘A True Hero’
    ; ‘Mountain and Squirrel’
    ; ‘The Snow-Storm’
    ; ‘The Problem’
    ; ‘Traveling’
    ; ‘The Compensation of Calamity’
    ; ‘Self Reliance’
    ; ‘Nature’

  JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
    ; Whittier’s Humble Birth, Ancestry, Education
    ; Poet of the Abolitionists
    ; His Poems and His Prose
    ; New England’s History Embalmed in Verse
    ; Our Most Distinctively American Poet
    ; ‘My Playmate’
    ; ‘The Changeling’
    ; ‘The ;Worship of Nature’

        ; ‘Workskip’ replaced with ‘Worship’

    ; ‘The Bare-foot Boy’
    ; ‘Maud Muller’
    ; ‘Memories’
    ; ‘In Prison For Debt’
    ; ‘The Storm’ (From ‘Snow Bound’)
    ; ‘Ichabod’

  OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
    ; Admired by the English-speaking World
    ; His Education and Popularity
    ; Early Poems
    ; Autocrat and Professor at the Breakfast Table
    ; Holmes’ Genial and Lovable Nature
    ; ‘Bill and Joe’
    ; ‘Union and Liberty’
    ; ‘Old Ironsides’
    ; ‘My Aunt’
    ; ‘The Height of the Ridiculous’
    ; ‘The Chambered Nautilus’
    ; ‘Old Age and the Professor’ (Prose)
    ; ‘The Brain’ (Prose)
    ; ‘My Last Walk with the School Mistress’
    ; ‘A Random Conversation on Old Maxims, Boston and other Towns’

  JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
    ; Profoundest of American Poets
    ; Early Life and Beginning in Literature
    ; Marriage, and the Influence of his Wife
    ; Home at Cambridge (view of)
    ; Humorous Poems and Prose Writings
    ; Longfellow’s Poem on Mrs. Lowell’s Death
    ; Public Career of the Author
    ; How Lowell is Regarded by Scholars
    ; ‘The Gothic Genius’ (From ‘The Cathedral’)
    ; ‘The Rose’
    ; ‘The Heritage’
    ; ‘Act For Truth’
    ; ‘The First Snow-Fall’
    ; ‘Fourth-of-July Ode’
    ; ‘The Dandelion’
    ; ‘The Alpine Sheep’ (by Mrs. Lowell)

  BAYARD TAYLOR.
    ; Life as a Farmer Boy
    ; Education
    ; His First Book
    ; Encouragement from Horace Greeley
    ; A Two Years’ Tramp Through Europe
    ; A Most Delightful Book of Travel
    ; An Inveterate Nomad
    ; Public Career of the Author
    ; ‘The Bison Track’
    ; ‘The Song of the Camp’
    ; ‘Bedouin Song’
    ; ‘The Arab to the Palm’
    ; ‘Life on the Nile’

  NATHANIEL P. WILLIS.
    ; A Devotee of Fashion
    ; Birth and Ancestors
    ; Educational Facilities
    ; His First Poems
    ; A Four Years’ Tour in Europe
    ; Marriage and Home
    ; A Second Journey to England
    ; Death
    ; An Untiring Worker
    ; ‘David’s Lament for Absalom’
    ; ‘The Dying Alchemist’
    ; ‘The Belfry Pigeon’

  RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.
    ; His Humble Origin and Early Struggles
    ; Introduction into Literature
    ; Stoddard’s Style
    ; Literary Dinner in His Honor (1892)
    ; Ik Marvel’s Letter and Whitcomb Riley’s Poem
    ; ‘A Curtain Call’
    ; ‘Hymn to the Beautiful’
    ; ‘A Dirge’
    ; ‘The Shadow of the Hand’
    ; ‘A Serenade’

  WALTER WHITMAN (WALT).
    ; The Estimates of Critics
    ; Charms of Whitman’s Poetry
    ; Life and Works of the Poet
    ; Biographies of the Poet
    ; ‘Darest Thou Now, O Soul’
    ; ‘O Captain! My Captain’
    ; ‘In All, Myself’
    ; ‘Old Ireland’
    ; ‘P;an of Joy’

  JAMES MAURICE THOMPSON.
    ; Birth and Early Life
    ; A Thorough Southerner
    ; Man of Letters and Scientist
    ; Chief of the State Geological Survey
    ; Works of the Author
    ; ‘Ceres’
    ; ‘Diana’

  THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
    ; At the Head of Modern Lyrical Writers
    ; Birth and Early Life
    ; Mercantile Career
    ; War Correspondent
    ; Life in Boston
    ; Works
    ; Visit to England
    ; ‘Alec Yeaton’s Son’
    ; ‘On Lynn Terrace’
    ; ‘Sargent’s Portrait of Edwin Booth at “The Players.”’

  RICHARD WATSON GILDER.
    ; Purity of Sentiment and Delicacy of Expression
    ; Education and Early Life
    ; Journalist
    ; Editor of “Hours at Home”
    ; Politician and Reformer
    ; A Staunch Friend of our Colleges
    ; A Man of Exalted Ideals
    ; ‘Sonnet (After the Italian)’
    ; ‘The Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln’
    ; ‘Sheridan’
    ; ‘Sunset From the Train’
    ; ‘O Silver River Flowing to the Sea’
    ; ‘There is Nothing New Under the Sun’
    ; ‘Memorial Day’
    ; ‘A Woman’s Thought’

  JOHN HAY.
    ; His Western Birth and Education
    ; Service to President Lincoln
    ; Military Career
    ; Appointed Ambassador to Great Britain
    ; A List of His Books
    ; How He Came to Write “Little Breeches”
    ; ‘Little Breeches’
    ; ‘Jim Bludso’
    ; ‘How it Happened’

  JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.
    ; Great Popularity with the Masses
    ; A Poet of the Country People
    ; Birth and Education
    ; First Occupation
    ; Congratulated by Longfellow
    ; Mr. Riley’s Methods of Work
    ; The Poet’s Home
    ; Constantly “on the Wing”
    ; ‘A Boy’s Mother’
    ; ‘Thoughts on the Late War’
    ; ‘Our Hired Girl’
    ; ‘The Raggedy Man’

  BRET HARTE.
    ; The Poet of the Mining Camp
    ; Birth and Education
    ; Emigrated to California
    ; Schoolteacher and Miner
    ; Position on a Frontier Paper
    ; Editorial Position on the “Golden Era”
    ; Secretary of the U. S. Mint at San Francisco
    ; In Chicago and Boston
    ; U. S. Consul to Crefield and Glasgow
    ; A List of his Works
    ; ‘The Society Upon the Stanislaus’
    ; ‘Dickens in Camp’

  EUGENE FIELD.
    ; The “Poet of Child Life”
    ; Troups of Children for his Friends
    ; Peace-maker Among the Small Ones
    ; A Feast with his Little Friends
    ; A Devoted Husband
    ; Congenial Association with his Fellow-workers
    ; Birth and Early Life
    ; His Works
    ; ‘Our Two Opinions’
    ; ‘Lullaby’
    ; ‘A Dutch Lullaby’
    ; ‘A Norse Lullaby’

  WILL CARLETON.
    ; His Poems Favorites for Recitation
    ; Birth and Early Life
    ; Teacher, Farmhand and College Graduate
    ; Journalist and Lecturer
    ; A List of his Works
    ; ‘Betsy and I Are Out’
    ; ‘Gone With a Handsomer Man’

  CINCINNATUS HINER MILLER (JOAQUIN).
    ; Removal from Indiana to Oregon
    ; Experiences in Mining and Filibustering
    ; Marries and Becomes Editor and Lawyer
    ; Visit to London to Seek a Publisher
    ; ‘Thoughts of My Western Home’
    ; ‘Mount Shasta’
    ; ‘Kit Carson’s Ride’
    ; ‘J. Miller’s Alaska Letter’

  JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.
    ; First American Novelist
    ; Birth and Childhood
    ; The Wilderness his Teacher
    ; Sailor Life
    ; Marriage and Home
    ; “The Spy”
    ; Plaudits From Both Sides of the Atlantic
    ; The First Genuine Salt-water Novel
    ; Removal to New York
    ; A Six Years’ Visit to Europe
    ; His Remaining Nineteen Years
    ; ‘Encounter With a Panther’
    ; ‘The Capture of a Whale’

  NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
    ; The Greatest of American Romancers
    ; Birth, Ancestors, and Childhood
    ; Twelve Years of Solitary Existence
    ; His First Book
    ; “Twice Told Tales”
    ; A Staunch Democrat
    ; Marriage and the “Old Manse”
    ; The Masterpiece in American Fiction
    ; Books Written by Hawthorne
    ; Death and Funeral
    ; ‘Emerson and the Emersonites’
    ; ‘Pearl’
    ; ‘Sights From a Steeple’
    ; ‘A Reminiscence of Early Life’

  EDWARD EVERETT HALE.
    ; Among the Best Known American Authors
    ; A Noted Lecturer
    ; Birth and Education
    ; Career as a Clergyman
    ; Newspaper and Magazine Work
    ; A Prominent Short-Story-teller
    ; An Historical Writer of Great Prominence
    ; Patriotic Interest in Public Affairs
    ; ‘Lost’

  WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.
    ; One of the Greatest of Modern American Novelists
    ; Birth and Early Life
    ; Editor of the “Ohio State Journal”
    ; His First Volume of Verse
    ; His “Life of Abraham Lincoln”
    ; Consul to Venice
    ; Mr. Howells’ Works
    ; Editor of the “Atlantic Monthly”
    ; ‘The First Boarder’
    ; ‘Impressions on Visiting Pompeii’
    ; ‘Venetian Vagabonds’

  GENERAL LEW WALLACE.
    ; Began His Literary Career Late in Life
    ; Birth and Early Life
    ; Lawyer and Soldier
    ; Governor of Utah
    ; Appointed Minister to Turkey
    ; His Most Popular Book
    ; Enormous Circulation
    ; ‘Description of Christ’
    ; ‘The Prince of India Teaches Re-incarnation’
    ; ‘The Prayer of the Wandering Jew’
    ; ‘Death of Montezuma’
    ; ‘Description of Virgin Mary’

  EDWARD EGGLESTON.
    ; Birth and Early Life
    ; A Man of Self-culture
    ; His Early Training
    ; Religious Devotion and Sacrifice
    ; Beginning of his Literary Career
    ; What Distinguishes his Novels
    ; List of his Chief Novels and Stories
    ; ‘Spelling down the Master’