LITERATURE FRANKLIN: IRVING: BRYANT: WEBSTER: EVERETT BOSTON AND NEW YORK HARVARD Copyright, 1891, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. PREFACE. THIS volume owes its existence to the desire of the Boston school authorities for a collection of productions from American authors of distinction, especially suitable for use in the most advanced class of the grammar schools. Its contents are taken mostly from the Riverside Literature Series. At the request of the committee on text-books, the board of supervisors, after conferring with the publishers, planned the book and approved every selection. Their action was reported to. the committee on text-books, and upon the recommendation of this committee the school board, by a unanimous vote, adopted the proposed book, Masterpieces of American Literature, as a text-book for reading in the first class of the grammar schools. The considerations that guided in the make-up of the book were that the various authors should be represented by characteristic and noted productions ; that these productions, though generally above the present range of the thought and experience of the students, should yet be within their reach; that they should be inspiring and uplifting in their influence upon life and character, and fitted to serve the great |