Women Books

I WOMAN AND MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME "Many things that among the Greeks are considered improper and unfitting," wrote Cornelius Nepos in the preface to his "Lives," "are permitted by our customs. Is there by chance a Roman who is ashamed to take his wife to a dinner away from home? Does it happen that the mistress of the house in any family does not enter the anterooms frequented by... more...

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION—PARENTAGE—LIFE IN SCOTLAND IN THE LAST CENTURY—EARLY EDUCATION—SCHOOL. The life of a woman entirely devoted to her family duties and to scientific pursuits affords little scope for a biography. There are in it neither stirring events nor brilliant deeds to record; and as my Mother was strongly averse to gossip, and to revelations of private life or of intimate... more...

BRAVE DEEDS OF RESCUE BY WOMEN ALICE AYRES AND THE UNION STREET FIRE 'FIRE! FIRE!' It was two o'clock in the morning when this cry was heard in Union Street, Borough, London, and the people who ran to the spot saw an oil shop in flames, and at a window above it a servant girl, Alice Ayres, screaming for help. Some rushed off to summon the fire-brigade, but those who remained feared that... more...

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN CONDÉ AND TURENNE AT PARIS—NOBLE CONDUCT OF MADEMOISELLE DE MONTPENSIER—FALL OF THE FRONDE. The second-rate actors in this shifting drama presented no less diversity in the motives of their actions. Beaufort, who commanded the troops of Gaston, and Nemours those of Condé, although brothers-in-law, weakened by their dissentions an army which their concord would have rendered... more...

THE WIVES OF GENERAL HOUSTON Sixty or seventy years ago it was considered a great joke to chalk up on any man's house-door, or on his trunk at a coaching-station, the conspicuous letters "G. T. T." The laugh went round, and every one who saw the inscription chuckled and said: "They've got it on you, old hoss!" The three letters meant "gone to Texas"; and for any man to... more...

The simple story of the life of Pocahontas is sufficiently romantic without the embellishments which have been wrought on it either by the vanity of Captain Smith or the natural pride of the descendants of this dusky princess who have been ennobled by the smallest rivulet of her red blood. That she was a child of remarkable intelligence, and that she early showed a tender regard for the whites and... more...

CHAPTER I Tells how a little girl lived in a lowly home, and played, and dreamed dreams, and how a dark shadow came into her life and made her unhappy; how when she grew older she went into a factory and learned to weave, and how in her spare minutes she taught herself many things, and worked amongst wild boys; and how she was sent to Africa. One cold day in December, in the city of Aberdeen, a baby... more...

CHAPTER I. Sitting down at the age of eighty-four to give an account of my life, I feel that it connects itself naturally with the growth and development of the province of South Australia, to which I came with my family in the year 1839, before it was quite three years old. But there is much truth in Wordsworth's line, "the child is father of the man," and no less is the mother of the... more...

INTRODUCTION. Few women have worked so faithfully for the cause of humanity as Mary Wollstonecraft, and few have been the objects of such bitter censure. She devoted herself to the relief of her suffering fellow-beings with the ardor of a Saint Vincent de Paul, and in return she was considered by them a moral scourge of God. Because she had the courage to express opinions new to her generation, and the... more...

CLARA A. SWAIN, M.D. "The frail little mother of a frail little daughter" did not live long enough to see the fullest answer to her prayer that her youngest born might "grow up to be a good and useful woman," for she passed away before her daughter began her medical career, but the prayer was not forgotten by Him who ever hears the cry of those who call upon Him in faith. Clara was the... more...