Biography & Autobiography Books

NOVEMBER, 1862. Secretary Chase — French Mediation — the Decembriseur — Diplomatic Bendings. November 18.—In the street a soldier offered to sell me the pay already several months overdue to him. As I could not help him, as gladly I would have done, being poor, he sold it to a curb-stone broker, a street note-shaver. I need not say that the poor soldier sustained a loss of twenty-five per cent.... more...

CHAPTER I. Kit Carson's Youth—His Visit to New Mexico—Acts as Interpreter and inVarious Other Employments—Joins a Party of Trappers and Engages in aFight with Indians—Visits the Sacramento Valley. "Kit Carson," the most famous hunter, scout and guide ever known in this country, was a native of Kentucky, the scene of the principal exploits of Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, the Wetzel... more...

THE HEIR OF SWIFT'S VANESSA Nowhere in the annals of our history is recorded an odder phase of curious fortune than that by which Bishop Berkeley, of Cloyne, was enabled early in the eighteenth century to sail o'erseas to Newport, Rhode Island, there to build (in 1729) the beautiful old place, Whitehall, which is still standing. Hundreds of interested visitors drive every summer to the old... more...

PREFACE. By prescription, which often has the force of law, a book should have both a Preface and an Introduction: the first relating to the writer; the second to the things written. I may well dispense with the latter, for what is here written the humblest capacity can understand; and it would be cruel to detain him long on the porch who is anxious to enter the building. But, dear reader, a word with... more...

AMONG THE GREATMASTERS OF MUSIC. ST. CECILIA. One of the most ancient legends handed down to us by the early Church is that of St. Cecilia, the patroness of music and musicians. She is known to have been honoured by Christians as far back as the third century, in which she is supposed to have lived. Doubtless much of fancy has been added, in all the ensuing years, to the facts of Cecilia's life... more...

CHAPTER ONE For more than two years now, I have been trying to forget those first months of the war. The months when the Black Watch and other regiments of the immortal “contemptible little army” marched into the unknown against the fiercest, most efficient military power the world, up to that time, had known; the months when hidden enemies struck swiftly mystifying blows with strange weapons, the... more...

INTRODUCTION. There were two cousins Von der Trenck, who were barons descended from an ancient house in East Prussia, and were adventurous soldiers, to whom, as to the adventurous, there were adventures that lost nothing in the telling, for they were told by the authors’ most admiring friends—themselves.  Franz, the elder, was born in 1711, the son of an Austrian general; and Frederick, whose... more...

PREFACE. The history of our race is the record mainly of men's achievements, in war, in statecraft and diplomacy. If mention is made of woman it is of queens and intriguing beauties who ruled and schemed for power and riches, and often worked mischief and ruin by their wiles. The story of woman's work in great migrations has been told only in lines and passages where it ought instead to fill... more...

I. The Beginnings. The art of literary portraiture in the seventeenth century developed with the effort to improve the writing of history. Its first and at all times its chief purpose in England was to show to later ages what kind of men had directed the affairs and shaped the fortunes of the nation. In France it was to be practised as a mere pastime; to sketch well-known figures in society, or to... more...

PROLOGUE On the 8th of April, 1492, in a bedroom of the Carneggi Palace, about three miles from Florence, were three men grouped about a bed whereon a fourth lay dying. The first of these three men, sitting at the foot of the bed, and half hidden, that he might conceal his tears, in the gold-brocaded curtains, was Ermolao Barbaro, author of the treatise 'On Celibacy', and of 'Studies in... more...