Biography & Autobiography Books

                          DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS.                                 MARCH                               1663-1664 March 1st. Up and to the office, where we sat all the morning, and at noon to the 'Change, and after much business and meeting my uncle Wight, who told me how Mr. Maes had like to... more...

Ruth Thompson, InterviewingGraff, Editing Ex-Slave InterviewCincinnati CHARLES H. ANDERSON3122 Fredonia St.,Cincinnati, Ohio   "Life experience excels all reading. Every place you go, you learn something from every class of people. Books are just for a memory, to keep history and the like, but I don't have to go huntin' in libraries, I got one in my own head, for you can't forget... more...

I. It was an afternoon of the brilliancy known only to an afternoon of the American summer, and the water of the swift Piscataqua River glittered in the sun with a really incomparable brilliancy. But nothing could light up the great monster of a ship, painted the dismal lead-color which our White Squadrons put on with the outbreak of the war, and she lay sullen in the stream with a look of ponderous... more...

FOREWORD Friends of Arctic exploration and discovery, with whom I have come in contact, and many whom I know only by letter, have been greatly interested in the fact of a colored man being an effective member of a serious Arctic expedition, and going north, not once, but numerous times during a period of over twenty years, in a way that showed that he not only could and did endure all the stress of... more...

The River Rises DURING this big rise these small-fry craft were an intolerable nuisance. We were running chute after chute,—a new world to me,—and if there was a particularly cramped place in a chute, we would be pretty sure to meet a broad-horn there; and if he failed to be there, we would find him in a still worse locality, namely, the head of the chute, on the shoal water. And then there would... more...

                          DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS.                               MAY & JUNE                                  1663 May 1st. Up betimes and my father with me, and he and I all the morning and Will Stankes private, in my wife's closet above, settling our matters concerning our Brampton estate,... more...

'The first poetess I can recollect is Mrs. Barbauld, with whose works I became acquainted—before those of any other author, male or female—when I was learning to spell words of one syllable in her story-books for children.' So says Hazlitt in his lectures on living poets. He goes on to call her a very pretty poetess, strewing flowers of poesy as she goes. The writer must needs, from the... more...

PREFACE For a long time, in the hopefulness and confidence of youth, I dreamed of going to Palestine. But that dream was denied, for want of money and leisure. Then, for a long time, in the hardening strain of early manhood, I was afraid to go to Palestine, lest the journey should prove a disenchantment, and some of my religious beliefs be rudely shaken, perhaps destroyed. But that fear was removed by... more...

CHAPTER I TO FRANCE (APRIL 1917) The boat was crowded. Khaki, everywhere khaki; lifebelts, rain and storm, everything soaked. Destroyers, churning through the waves, played strange games all round us. Some old-time Tommies, taking everything for granted, smoked and laughed and told funny stories. Others had the look of dumb animals in pain, going to what they knew only too well. The new hands for... more...

INTRODUCTION. "To know another man well, especially if he be a noted and illustrious character, is a great thing not to be despised."—Sainte-Beuve. Many years ago a celebrated writer, in speaking of Lord Byron, who had then been dead some years, said that so much had already been written upon him that the subject had almost become commonplace, but was far from being exhausted. This truth,... more...