Biography & Autobiography Books

EDITOR'S PREFACE If the volume now presented to the public were a mere work of ART, the history of its misfortune might be written in two very simple words—TOO LATE. The nature and character of slavery have been subjects of an almost endless variety of artistic representation; and after the brilliant achievements in that field, and while those achievements are yet fresh in the memory of the... more...

CHAPTER I PEDIGREE "Sir John Maundeville, Kt.," was his prototype, and Father Prout was his patron saint. The one introduced him to the study of British balladry, the other led him to the classic groves of Horace. "I am a Yankee by pedigree and education," wrote Eugene Field to Alice Morse Earle, the author of "The Sabbath in Puritan New England," and other books of the same... more...

JANUARY 1660-1661 1660-61. At the end of the last and the beginning of this year, I do live in one of the houses belonging to the Navy Office, as one of the principal officers, and have done now about half a year. After much trouble with workmen I am now almost settled; my family being, myself, my wife, Jane, Will. Hewer, and Wayneman,—[Will Wayneman appears by this to have been forgiven for his... more...

The researches of Sir Harris Nicolas, Dr. Furnivall, Mr. Selby and others have provided us with a considerable mass of detailed information regarding the life and career of Geoffrey Chaucer. Since the publication of Nicolas's biography of the poet prefixed to the Aldine edition of Chaucer's works in 1845, the old traditional biography of conjecture and inference, based often on mere... more...

Chapter 31 A Thumb-print and What Came of It WE were approaching Napoleon, Arkansas. So I began to think about my errand there. Time, noonday; and bright and sunny. This was bad—not best, anyway; for mine was not (preferably) a noonday kind of errand. The more I thought, the more that fact pushed itself upon me—now in one form, now in another. Finally, it took the form of a distinct question: is it... more...

TAKING A LINE IN THE SERVICE. That there is a tide in the affairs of men, has very naturally become a figure of frequent and almost hackneyed use in the cockpits, gun-rooms, and even the captains' cabins of our ships and vessels of war. Like its numerous brethren of common-places, it will be found, perhaps, but of small application to the real business of life; though it answers capitally to wind... more...

BOYS' BOOK OF FAMOUS SOLDIERS WASHINGTON THE YOUNG SURVEYOR "Turn your guns around on them! Stop them!" The command was given in peremptory tones to a demoralized group of soldiers. Not waiting for them to carry out his orders, the young officer who gave them leaped from his horse, and with his own hands turned one of the guns upon the advancing foe. Had it been the Argonne Forest, and the... more...

PREFACE. The title I have given my black heroine, in this second edition of her story, viz.: THE MOSES OF HER PEOPLE, may seem a little ambitious, considering that this Moses was a woman, and that she succeeded in piloting only three or four hundred slaves from the land of bondage to the land of freedom. But I only give her here the name by which she was familiarly known, both at the North and the... more...

INTRODUCTION To close the scene of all his actions heWas brought from Newgate to the fatal tree;And there his life resigned, his race is run,And Tyburn ends what wickedness begun. If there be a haunted spot in London it must surely be a few square yards that lie a little west of the Marble Arch, for in the long course of some six centuries over fifty thousand felons, traitors and martyrs took there a... more...

                          DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS.                                DECEMBER                                  1667 December 1st (Lord's day). Up, and after entering my journal for 2 or 3 days, I to church, where Mr. Mills, a dull sermon: and in our pew there sat a great lady, which I afterwards... more...