Biography & Autobiography Books

The publication of the Rebellion Records puts within the reach of every student the official reports of the various campaigns and battles of the Great Conflict, but something more is needed. They deal but slightly with men's motives, and still less with their personal peculiarities. They give only here and there any idea whatever of the origin of the plans of campaigns or battles and rarely any... more...

BY THE RIVER. IT did not take us younger ones long to get acquainted with our new home, and to love it. To live beside a river had been to me a child's dream of romance. Rivers, as I pictured them, came down from the mountains, and were born in the clouds. They were bordered by green meadows, and graceful trees leaned over to gaze into their bright mirrors. Our shallow tidal creek was the only... more...

Gentlemen,—The learned man, illustrious in so many ways, whose life I am going to relate, was taken from France half a century ago. I hasten to make this remark, so as thoroughly to show that I have selected this subject without being deterred by complaints which I look upon as unjust and inapplicable. The glory of the members of the early Academy of Sciences is an inheritance for the present... more...

CHAPTER I. Our country is quietly enjoying the benefits of a great activity. Foreign Missions are still feeling a noble impulse, and the origin of this force was, under God, in the heart and brain of Samuel J. Mills. It is a name known to us, but a history almost forgotten. Only upon the shelves of some antiquarian, or in the undisturbed library of some old homestead can a volume be found bearing the... more...

If writers of history were to live a few years longer than the number commonly granted as the span of human life, I, for my part, have no manner of doubt that they would have something to add to the accounts of the past previously written by them, for the reason that, even as it is not possible for a single man, be he ever so diligent, to learn the exact truth in a flash, or to discover all the details... more...

Texarkana DistrictFOLKLORE SUBJECTSName of Interviewer: Cecil CopelandSubject: Social Customs—Reminiscences of an Ex-SlaveSubject: Foods This Information given by: Doc QuinnPlace of Residence: 1217 Ash Street, Texarkana, ArkansasOccupation: None [TR: also reported as Ex-slave.]Age: 93 [TR: also reported as 94.] [TR: Information moved from bottom of first page.][TR: Repetitive information deleted from... 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...

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...

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...

INTRODUCTION In the history of the world few persons have attained that high degree of spirituality reached by Madame Guyon. Born in a corrupt age, in a nation marked for its degeneracy; nursed and reared in a church, as profligate as the world in which it was embedded; persecuted at every step of her career; groping as she did in spiritual desolation and ignorance, nevertheless, she arose to the... more...