Biography & Autobiography Books

CHAPTER I. I LEAVE MY FARM "Is it so small a thingTo have enjoyed the sun,To have lived light in spring?" It is eight o'clock of a sunny spring morning. I have been on the road for almost three hours. At five I left the town of Holt, before six I had crossed the railroad at a place called Martin's Landing, and an hour ago, at seven, I could see in the distance the spires of... more...

This account of the life of St. Ignatius, dictated by himself, is considered by the Bollandists the most valuable record of the great Founder of the Society of Jesus. The editors of the Stimmen Aus Maria Laach, the German review, as well as those of the English magazine, The Month, tell us that it, more than any other work, gives an insight into the spiritual life of St. Ignatius. Few works in... more...

January 1st (Lord's day). Lay long in bed, having been busy late last night, then up and to my office, where upon ordering my accounts and papers with respect to my understanding my last year's gains and expense, which I find very great, as I have already set down yesterday. Now this day I am dividing my expense, to see what my clothes and every particular hath stood me in: I mean all the... more...

LIFE OF PLUTARCH. Plutarch was born probably between A.D. 45 and A.D. 50, at the little town of Chaeronea in Boeotia. His family appears to have been long established in this place, the scene of the final destruction of the liberties of Greece, when Philip defeated the Athenians and Boeotian forces there in 338 B.C. It was here also that Sulla defeated Mithridates, and in the great civil wars of Rome... more...

I 12th May, 1900. ... The weather is becoming hot, even here in latitude 40 and in the month of May. The Peking dust, distinguished among all the dusts of the earth for its blackness, its disagreeable insistence in sticking to one's clothes, one's hair, one's very eyebrows, until a grey-brown coating its visible to every eye, is rising in heavier clouds than ever. In the market-places,... more...

JANUARY 1665-1666 January 1st (New-Yeare's Day). Called up by five o'clock, by my order, by Mr. Tooker, who wrote, while I dictated to him, my business of the Pursers; and so, without eating or drinking, till three in the afternoon, and then, to my great content, finished it. So to dinner, Gibson and he and I, and then to copying it over, Mr. Gibson reading and I writing, and went a good way... more...

I am well aware that to try to write Mr. Gladstone's life at all—the life of a man who held an imposing place in many high national transactions, whose character and career may be regarded in such various lights, whose interests were so manifold, and whose years bridged so long a span of time—is a stroke of temerity. To try to write his life to-day, is to push temerity still further. The ashes... more...

ORATION OF HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL. My Countrymen: On the 22d day of February, 1732, God gave to the world the highest type of humanity, in the person of George Washington. Combining within himself the better qualities of the soldier, sage, statesman, and patriot, alike brave, wise, discreet, and incorruptible, the common consent of mankind has awarded him the incomparable title of Father of his... more...

July 1st. To the office, and there we sat till past noon, and then Captain Cuttance and I by water to Deptford, where the Royal James (in which my Lord went out the last voyage, though [he] came back in the Charles) was paying off by Sir W. Batten and Sir W. Pen. So to dinner, where I had Mr. Sheply to dine with us, and from thence I sent to my Lord to know whether she should be a first rate, as the... more...

NOVEMBER. [Edinburgh,] November 20, 1825.—I have all my life regretted that I did not keep a regular Journal. I have myself lost recollection of much that was interesting, and I have deprived my family and the public of some curious information, by not carrying this resolution into effect. I have bethought me, on seeing lately some volumes of Byron's notes, that he probably had hit upon the... more...