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 ELEGANTLY ILLUSTRATED WITH HALF TONE PORTRAITS AND PHOTOGRAPHS OF AUTHORS’ HOMES, TOGETHER WITH MANY OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT MONARCH BOOK COMPANY, Successors to and formerly L. P. MILLER & CO., CHICAGO, ILL. PHILADELPHIA, PA. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1897, by W. E. SCULL, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. _All rights reserved._ ALL PERSONS ARE WARNED NOT TO INFRINGE UPON OUR COPYRIGHT BY USING EITHER THE MATTER OR THE PICTURES IN THIS VOLUME. LITERATURE OF AMERICA. 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, Phœbe 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.