Biography & Autobiography Books

Mary Raines is the oldest living person, white or black, in Fairfield County. If she survives until next December, she will have attained her century of years. She lives with her widowed daughter, Fannie McCollough, fifty-seven years old, and a son, Joe Raines, aged 76 years. They rent a two-room frame house, on lands of Mrs. Sallie Wylie, Chester County, S.C. Joe, the son, is a day laborer on nearby... more...

October 1st. Early to my Lord to Whitehall, and there he did give me some work to do for him, and so with all haste to the office. Dined at home, and my father by chance with me. After dinner he and I advised about hangings for my rooms, which are now almost fit to be hung, the painters beginning to do their work to-day. After dinner he and I to the Miter, where with my uncle Wight (whom my father... more...

ELBERT HUBBARD II BERT HUBBARD We are not sent into this world to do anything into which we can not put our hearts. We have certain work to do for our bread and that is to be done strenuously, other work to do for our delight and that is to be done heartily; neither is to be done by halves or shifts, but with a will; and what is not worth this effort is not to be done at all.—John Ruskin I am Elbert... more...

February 1st. In the morning went to my office where afterwards the old man brought me my letters from the carrier. At noon I went home and dined with my wife on pease porridge and nothing else. After that I went to the Hall and there met with Mr. Swan and went with him to Mr. Downing's Counsellor, who did put me in very little hopes about the business between Mr. Downing and Squib, and told me... more...

INTRODUCTION The "Historia Calamitatum" of Peter Abélard is one of those human documents, out of the very heart of the Middle Ages, that illuminates by the glow of its ardour a shadowy period that has been made even more dusky and incomprehensible by unsympathetic commentators and the ill-digested matter of "source-books." Like the "Confessions" of St. Augustine it is an... more...

PREFACE. There are few works, the authors of which can possibly be permitted to recommend them as worthy of universal regard, without the imputation of intolerable vanity; an imputation little likely to be diminished by the consideration, that other writers, over whom a decided preference is claimed, may have previously occupied the same subject. A Life of Lord Nelson, however, replete with original... more...

January 1st, 1662-63. Lay with my wife at my Lord's lodgings, where I have been these two nights, till 10 o'clock with great pleasure talking, then I rose and to White Hall, where I spent a little time walking among the courtiers, which I perceive I shall be able to do with great confidence, being now beginning to be pretty well known among them. Then to my wife again, and found Mrs. Sarah... more...

                          DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS.                                 MARCH                               1667-1668 March 1st (Lord's day). Up very betimes, and by coach to Sir W. Coventry's; and there, largely carrying with me all my notes and papers, did run over our whole defence in the... more...

CHAPTER I. Birth and Parentage.—Education.—Religious Convictions.—Prayers in the Tomb.—Union with the Church.—Labors for the Poor.—Marriage. The subject of this narrative was born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1823. Her maiden name was Mary Smith Kelsey. Her mother was a free colored woman, very light, and her father a white man—an Englishman of rank and culture. She was a very lovely child in... more...

PREFACE. This volume is not sent forth as a full history of the Sioux Missions. That volume has not yet been written, and probably never will be. The pioneer missionaries were too busily engaged in the formation of the Dakota Dictionary and Grammar, in the translation of the Bible into that wild, barbaric tongue; in the preparation of hymn books and text books:—in the creation of a literature for the... more...