Biography & Autobiography Books

FOREWORD Having been asked by the Author of this Book, No. 73,194 Private Jack O'Brien of the 28th Northwest Battalion, to write a few words as an introduction to the story which he is placing before the public, it gives me much pleasure to do so. The 6th Canadian Infantry Brigade raised and organized from the four western provinces of Canada has done its share and at the time of writing it is... more...

Chapter 1. Parentage: introduction to the royal institution: earliestexperiments: first royal society paper: marriage. It has been thought desirable to give you and the world some image of MICHAEL FARADAY, as a scientific investigator and discoverer. The attempt to respond to this desire has been to me a labour of difficulty, if also a labour of love. For however well acquainted I may be with the... more...

FOREWORD Time, though a good Collector, is not always a reliable Historian. That is to say, that although nothing of interest or importance is lost, yet an affair may be occasionally invested with a glamour that is not wholly its own. I venture to think that Piracy has fortuned in this particular. We are apt to base our ideas of Piracy on the somewhat vague ambitions of our childhood; and I suppose,... more...

ABRAHAM’S FOUR SURRENDERS A great many people are afraid of the will of God, and yet I believe that one of the sweetest lessons that we can learn in the school of Christ is the surrender of our wills to God, letting Him plan for us and rule our lives. If I know my own mind, if an angel should come from the throne of God and tell me that I could have my will done the rest of my days on earth, and that... more...

CHAPTER I. My flight from the North and escape into Virginia.—Revolutionary scene at Richmond.—The Union Convention passes the Ordinance of Secession.—Great excitement prevails in the South.   April 8th, 1861. Burlington, New Jersey.—The expedition sails to-day from New York. Its purpose is to reduce Fort Moultrie, Charleston harbor, and relieve Fort Sumter, invested by the Confederate forces.... more...

CHAPTER I Count Tiretta of Trevisa Abbe Coste—Lambertini, the Pope's Niece HerNick—Name for Tiretta The Aunt and Niece—Our Talk by theFireside—Punishment of Damien—Tiretta's Mistake Anger ofMadame***—Their Reconciliation—My Happiness with Mdlle. de la MeureSilvia's Daughter—Mdlle, de la Meure Marries My Despair and Jealousy—AChange far the Better In the beginning of... more...

CHAPTER 1. CHAUCER'S TIMES. The biography of Geoffrey Chaucer is no longer a mixture of unsifted facts, and of more or less hazardous conjectures. Many and wide as are the gaps in our knowledge concerning the course of his outer life, and doubtful as many important passages of it remain—in vexatious contrast with the certainty of other relatively insignificant data—we have at least become... more...

INTRODUCTION. Humphry Davy was born at Penzance, in Cornwall, on the 17th of December, 1778, and died at Geneva on the 29th of May, 1829, at the age of fifty.  He was a philosopher who turned knowledge to wisdom; he was one of the foremost of our English men of science; and this book, written when he was dying, which makes Reason the companion of Faith, shows how he passed through the light of earth... more...

TO HALIBURTON, BLANCHE, AND SYDNEY. My dear Children, I dedicate this little volume to you in memory of your father, who, as you know, fell on March 12th, 1915, in the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. These Letters, which were written to me from France during the first winter of the World War, do not in any way pretend to literary attainment; they are just the simple letters of a soldier recording as a diary... more...

At the end of the eighties my father and mother, my brother and sisters and myself, all newly arrived from Dublin, were settled in Bedford Park in a red-brick house with several wood mantlepieces copied from marble mantlepieces by the brothers Adam, a balcony, and a little garden shadowed by a great horse-chestnut tree. Years before we had lived there, when the crooked, ostentatiously picturesque... more...