Biography & Autobiography Books

CHAPTER I. ANTECEDENTS.The child is father to the man;And I could wish my days to beBound each to each by natural piety. Wordsworth. A few preliminary pages of personal history I offer to those who followed me either in thought or deed during the Anglo-Boer War. My ancestors were Germans; my grandfather was born in the South. About the year 1820 he, along with two brothers, bade farewell to the land of... more...

CHAPTER I. THE "MONTFORT." A wintry ride—Retrospect—Embarkation—A typical day—"Stables" in rough weather—Las Palmas—The tropics—Inoculation—Journalism—Fashions—"Intelligent anticipation"—Stable-guard—Arrival. With some who left for the War it was "roses, roses, all the way." For us, the scene was the square of St. John's Wood Barracks at 2... more...

Chapter I. When the sun arose on the 22nd of June, 1918, three great transports were lying out in the stream of New York harbor. They were filled with American soldiers for duties overseas. They were well camouflaged and well convoyed. The previous afternoon they had pulled away from a Jersey City pier, where they had taken on their human cargoes, and they were undoubtedly under sealed orders. They had... more...

I. HOW I WENT TO THE FRONT The train was creeping along slowly in the soft night air. Seated on a truss of hay in the horse-box with my own two horses and that of my orderly, Wattrelot, I looked out through the gap left by the unclosed sliding door. How slowly we were going! How often we stopped! I got impatient as I thought of the hours we were losing whilst the other fellows were fighting and reaping... more...

Chapter I A Little German Surprise Party "Two days and the French will be here! Three days at the outside, and not an ugly Boche left. Just mark my word!" This the patriarchal gentleman in the Hotel Metropole whispered to me about a month after the Germans had captured Brussels. They had taken away his responsibilities as President of the Belgian Red Cross, so that now he had naught to do but... more...

CHAPTER I. EARLY LIFE: LITERARY AND POLITICAL WRITINGS. David Hume was born, in Edinburgh on the 26th of April (O.S.), 1711. His parents were then residing in the parish of the Tron church, apparently on a visit to the Scottish capital, as the small estate which his father Joseph Hume, or Home, inherited, lay in Berwickshire, on the banks of the Whitadder or Whitewater, a few miles from the border, and... more...

I HARE STREET How loudly and boisterously the wind roared to-day across the low-hung, cloud-smeared sky, driving the broken rack before it, warm and wet out of the south! What a wintry landscape! leafless trees bending beneath the onset of the wind, bare and streaming hedges, pale close-reaped wheat-fields, brown ploughland, spare pastures stretching away to left and right, softly rising and falling to... more...

CHAPTER I a few words of introduction Fate has not been unkind to me. I have had my chances, particularly during the last two or three years, and—well, I have done my best to make the most of what has come my way. That and nothing more. How I came to be entrusted with the important commission of acting as Official War Office Kinematographer is an interesting story, and the first few chapters of this... more...

CHAPTER I "I want something to do." This remark being addressed to the world in general, no one in particular felt it their duty to reply; so I repeated it to the smaller world about me, received the following suggestions, and settled the matter by answering my own inquiry, as people are apt to do when very much in earnest. "Write a book," quoth the author of my being. "Don't... more...

Chapter I. 1776-1794Josephine's voyage to France.In the year 1776 a very beautiful young lady, by the name of Josephine Rose Tascher, was crossing the Atlantic Ocean from the island of Martinique to France. She was but fifteen years of age; and, having been left an orphan in infancy, had been tenderly reared by an uncle and aunt, who were wealthy, being proprietors of one of the finest plantations... more...