"Autobiography" Quotes from Famous Books
... appeared in Graham's Magazine Cooper's "Life-Sketch of Perry," "The Battle of Lake Erie," and "The Autobiography of a Pocket-handkerchief," or "Social Life in New York." This volume of Graham's Magazine also included the life of "John Paul Jones," wherein appeared Cooper's masterful description of the celebrated battle of the Bon Homme Richard—one of the most remarkable ... — James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... of the hunter's life clung to him to the last, and in his eighty-second year he went on a hunting excursion to the mouth of the Kansas river."—Appleton's Encyclopedia, etc., art. "Boone." His fine and gracious nature reveals itself in his autobiography (The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon, Formerly a Hunter; Containing a Narrative of the Wars of Kentucky; Imlay's North America, 1793, ii. 52-54). "One day," he writes (pp. 330, sq.), "I undertook a tour through the country, and the diversity and beauties of nature ... — The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... "Miss Keller's autobiography, well written and full of practical interest in all sides of life, literary, artistic and social, records an extraordinary ... — The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... was feeling in despair and walking despondently along a Melbourne street," writes the Australian author of a yet unpublished autobiography, "when three children came running out of a lane and crossed the road in full daylight. The beauty and texture of their legs in the open air filled me with joy, so that I forgot all my troubles whilst looking at them. It was a bright revelation, an unexpected glimpse of Paradise, ... — Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of Dumfriesshire. His father was a shepherd, well acquainted with the duties of his profession, and a man of strong though uneducated mind. "My father, while I was yet a child," writes Mr Riddell, in a MS. autobiography, "left Sorbie; but when I had become able to traverse both burn and brae, hill and glen, I frequently returned to, and spent many weeks together in, the vale of my nativity. We had gone, under the same employer, ... — The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... sticks and appearing nightly in a vaudeville sketch entitled, "A Fight for Honor." His reminiscences were being published in a Sunday paper. It was this that gave Smith the idea of publishing Kid Brady's autobiography in Peaceful Moments, an idea which won the Kid's whole-hearted gratitude. Like most pugilists he had a passion for bursting into print. Print is the fighter's accolade. It signifies that he has arrived. He was grateful to Smith, too, for not editing his contributions. Jimmy Garvin groaned ... — The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... by itself, and yet it is true that world literature is, as Professor Moulton puts it, the autobiography of civilization. "A national literature is a reflection of the national history." Books as books reflect their authors. As literature they reflect the public opinion which gives them indorsement. When, therefore, public opinion: keeps alive a certain group of books, there ... — The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... much more is the past liable to be glossed over? To be faithful here is next to impossible, for Satan helps us to deceive ourselves and instructs us to carry out the deception to others. This consideration might well cause the pen of autobiography to drop from a Christian's hand, did not an earnest desire to glorify God in his merciful dealings, together with the consciousness that to no other could the task he safely delegated, act as a counterpoise to the discouragement. I do desire to magnify ... — Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... reviews," and within a few weeks of its publication as a book thirty thousand copies had been sold. The sale continues more actively than ever. Marguerite Audoux lives precisely as she lived before. She is writing a further instalment of her pseudonymous autobiography, and there is no apparent reason why this new instalment should not be ... — Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... that says how the three Worthylakes, father, mother, and young daughter, died on the same day and lie buried there; a mystery; the subject of a moving ballad, by the late BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, as may be seen in his autobiography, which will explain the secret of the triple gravestone; though the old philosopher has made a mistake, unless the ... — The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Sorge,"[221] which gives us the personification of care, represented as a nurse watching by his bedside, bring his objective method into marked contrast with Hoelderlin's subjective Weltschmerz. The same may be said of his autobiography in miniature, "Rueckschau,"[222] which catalogues the poet's experiences, pleasant and adverse, with evident sincerity though of course with a liberal admixture of witty irony. Needless to say there is no real Weltschmerz discoverable in such a pot ... — Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... itself in the non-ego. We believed in fairies, in magic, in angels, in transformations; Hans Christian Andersen, Grimm, The Black Aunt (oh, delectable, lost volume) were our sober history-books, and Robinson Crusoe was our autobiography. But I did occasionally take note of concrete appearances, too; and ... — Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... the data. I found to my astonishment that Mr. White reported to the State Department that a ship of ammunition sailed from Hamburg, and that he had not protested, although the Naval Attache had requested him to do so. The statements of von Jagow and Mr. White's in his autobiography did not agree with the facts. Germany did send ammunition to Spain, but Wilhelmstrasse was using Mr. White's book as proof that the Krupp interests did not supply our enemy in 1898. The latter part of September I entered Kovno, the important Russian fortress, eight days ... — Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... study, was deeply engaged in the production of a small illustrated work of fiction, which he was pleased to call The Adventures of Ben Buterkin at Scool. It was in a great measure an autobiography, and the cuts depicting the hero's flagellations—which were frequent in the course of the narrative—were executed with ... — Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... impatient of delay when there was work to do, notified the sergeant in charge of the men that he was going back that very afternoon. I tell the story of his trip as he has often told it to me, and as he has written it in his autobiography. ... — The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... add to the fee of the authorized and numbered guide who took possession of us as soon as we got out of our basket and led us unresisting to a waiting bullock sled. He invited himself into it, and gave himself the best of characters in the autobiography into which he wove his scanty instruction concerning the objects we passed. A bullock sled is not of such blithe progress as a toboggan, but it is very comfortable, and it is of an Oriental and litter-like dignity, with its calico cushions and curtains. One could not ... — Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... own credulous hopes of El Dorado—"Woe to COLUMBUS!" The portrait of Vanya's stepfather, brilliant, magnanimous, pursued by an AEschylean malignity of destiny, fills much of the foreground and is a quite masterly piece of work. One cannot be wrong in assuming this to be essential autobiography; there is a passionate conviction as of things intimately seen and dreadfully suffered. Such material might well have tempted to a mere piling of squalor upon squalor. A fine discretion has given a noble dignity to a record through which shines the unquenchable human spirit. ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... and flourishing. He was rude, presumptuous, dogmatic. To superiors in rank he was grudgingly respectful; to equals and inferiors, insupportably insolent. But when to these aggravating traits he added the vanity of printing an autobiography, exposing a thousand assailable points in his life and character, the temptation was irresistible, and the whole population of Grub Street enlisted in a crusade against him.[12] Fortunately, beneath the ... — Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... himself after a while, sounding the personal note with tentative timidity. Siward gravely encouraged him, and in a little while the outlines of his crude autobiography appeared, embodying his eventless boyhood in a Pennsylvania town; his career at the high school; the dawning desire for college equipment, satisfied by his father, who owned shares in the promising Deepvale Steel Plank Company; the unhappy years at Harvard—hard years, for he learned with ... — The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... possible those masterpieces of condensed biography in which Isaak Walton celebrates Herbert and Donne. Fuller and Aubrey, to name only two authors, spent lives of laborious industry in hunting down and chronicling the smallest facts about the worthies of their day and the time immediately before them. Autobiography followed where biography led. Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Margaret Duchess of Newcastle, as well as less reputable persons, followed the new mode. By the time of the Restoration Pepys and Evelyn were keeping their diaries, and Fox his journal. Just as in poetry the lyric, that ... — English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... King of Prussia against England," and his famous "Rules for Reducing a Great Empire to a Small One. "But I must not try to call the roll of all the good things in Franklin's ten volumes. I will simply say that those who know Franklin only in his "Autobiography," charming as that classic production is, have made but an imperfect acquaintance with the range, the vitality, the vigor of this admirable craftsman who chose a style "smooth, clear, and short," and made it serve every purpose of his ... — The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... portmanteau, arguing that though they might be of no use to me, they certainly would be of none to their present possessors. Some of these papers having appeared in the KNICKERBOCKER, and met with 'acceptance bounteous,' I am induced to transcribe for the edification of the reader, a portion of the autobiography of the writer. It is contained in the last chapter, or sheet, and is written in a different and more aged hand than the rest; and gives the 'moving why' of the old man, in isolating himself from his kind, in one of the great green deserts of the West, 'for which the ... — The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... type of feminine character alike as maiden and mother, whose autobiography was given to the world a few years ago, tells how the family at Quarry Bank struck and delighted her. 'We stayed a week with them,' she says, 'and admired the cultivation of mind and refinement of manners which Mrs. Greg preserved in the midst of a money-making ... — Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... "Haute Noblesse" was a splendid specimen of artistic decoration. The walls were frescoed with all sorts of marvellous hunting scenes, which Fritz had gradually incorporated in his own autobiography. Here stags were fleeing at a furious speed before a stout young gentleman on horseback, who was levelling his deadly aim at them; there the same stout young gentleman, with whiskers and general appearance slightly altered, was standing behind a big tree, firing at a hare ... — Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... 1675 before a committee of the House of Commons to give evidence against Lauderdale, and disclosed, without reluctance according to his enemies, confidences which had passed between him and the minister. He himself confesses in his autobiography that "it was a great error in me to appear in this matter," and his conduct cost him the patronage of the duke of York. In ecclesiastical matters he threw in his lot with Thomas Tillotson and John Tenison, and at the time of the Revolution had written some eighteen polemics ... — Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... happiness of children is Lucy Larcom (1826-1893). One of a numerous family, she worked as a child in the Lowell mills, later taught school in Illinois, was one of the editors of Our Young Folks, and wrote a most fascinating autobiography called A New England Girlhood. Several of her poems are still used in schools. The one that follows is, perhaps, the most popular of these. It is semi-dramatic, and the three voices of the poem can ... — Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Perhaps the possession of so jumpy and incalculable a husband had left her a little nervous. Anyhow, when she had retired to the inner chamber once more, that extraordinary man poured forth his apologia and autobiography over the dwindling wine. ... — Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... so well as your friends? You will show up your friends, then, one after another. When your friends give out, who is left for you? Why, nobody but your own family, of course. When you have used up your family, there is nothing left for you but to write your autobiography. ... — A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... term made its way into the language, from this humble source. I did not invent the word, but found it in one of Galt's novels, the Annals of the Parish, in which the Scotch clergyman, of whom the book is a supposed autobiography, is represented as warning his parishioners not to leave the Gospel and become utilitarians. With a boy's fondness for a name and a banner I seized on the word, and for some years called myself and others by it as a sectarian ... — Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... fidelity and veracity are as universally admitted as his direct and lucid style is generally admired. His account of his own life and career is a masterpiece in this category of literature, for it is written with blended modesty and naivete. In many passages of this "Autobiography" he does not hesitate to assume great credit for his own courage, probity, and skill, but in each case the justification is manifest, for he constantly refers to the tortuous and treacherous machinations ... — The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... was declared, the poet entered the service of the Prussian state and proved himself a careful and trusted official. Thus, living a busy life, he could write that classic of romantic idleness: Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts, The Autobiography of ... — A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... got about two thirds of the way along the painful stretch of autobiography, with which he was inflicting agony on himself by recounting to Miss Adair, when she raised her gray eyes to his with the faith and reverence still at their average level, even slightly ... — Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... O'r Nant, written by himself in choice Welsh, and his interlude which was styled "Cyfoeth a Thylody; or, Riches and Poverty." The life I had read in my boyhood in an old Welsh magazine, and I now read it again with great zest, and no wonder, as it is probably the most remarkable autobiography ever penned. The interlude I had never seen before, nor indeed any of the dramatic pieces of Twm O'r Nant, though I had frequently wished to procure some of them—so I read the present one with great eagerness. Of the life I shall give some account and also some extracts from it, which will enable ... — Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... Wife of the Rev. Dr. Thomas Somerville, minister of Jedburgh, already mentioned (p. 2). Dr. Somerville was author of Histories of Queen Anne and of William and Mary, and also of an autobiography.] ... — Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... final outburst of the Jewish apologist and think of what he had himself written to gainsay it, and what he was yet to write in his autobiography, we are fain to exclaim, o si sic omnia! One would like to believe that in the defense of the Jewish Law we have the true Josephus, driven in his old age by the goading of enemies to throw off the mask of Greco-Roman culture, and standing out boldly as a lover of his people and his people's ... — Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... admitting you still further into my confidence. It is disagreeable to me," said the reverend gentleman, with the most becoming humility, "to speak of myself. But it must be done. Shall we have a little coffee to help us through the coming extract from Father Benwell's autobiography? Don't look so serious, my son! When the occasion justifies it, let us take life lightly." He rang the bell and ordered the coffee, as if he was the master of the house. The servant treated him with the most scrupulous respect. He hummed a little tune, and ... — The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... This autobiography carries the reader from 1837, the year of Dr. Ebers's birth in Berlin, to 1863, when An Egyptian Princess was finished. The subsequent events of his life were outwardly calm, as befits the existence of a great scientist ... — Uarda • Georg Ebers
... subject to visual hallucinations, of a diseased nervous system, his right side weak with palsy, his right eye blind, and the vision of the left imperfect, was engaged one evening, shortly after the battle of Jena, as he tells us in his autobiography, in translating a brochure into Polish, when he felt a poke in his loins. He looked round, and found that it proceeded from a Negro or Egyptian boy, seemingly about twelve years of age. Although he was persuaded the whole was an illusion, he ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... the Hindus came to believe that the most effective type of sacrifice was self-sacrifice and suffering, accompanied by a refusal to injure others, or ahimsa.[53] Only the warrior caste of Kshatriyas was allowed to fight. In his autobiography, Gandhi brings out clearly the pious nature of his home environment, and the emphasis which was placed there upon not eating meat because of the sacred ... — Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... would be a thankless and wearisome task, necessitating a large volume which a mass of puerile incidents and inevitable repetitions would make almost readable. Moreover, it could scarcely help taking the form of an intimate and indiscreet autobiography; and it is not easy to bring one's self to make this sort of public confession. But it has to be done. In a science which is only in its early stages, it is not enough to show the object attained and to state one's conviction; it is necessary above all to describe every path ... — The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... (Strandbar).—He has also been successful as a recorder and editor of the biographies of greatly different people, based on first-hand accounts of their own lives. He is at present continuing with the writing of his autobiography—a ... — Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... Fourth-of-July orations,—all replete with information waiting for the historian. Nearly every State has its Historical Society, and Pioneer Associations are as plenty in our glorious West as was the fever and ague with which their members were baptized. If the golden opportunities of autobiography are lost, the American historian of the future will have to be satisfied, as must be satisfied the New England historian of to-day, with the meagre, lifeless information given by records, and the hyperbolical, untrustworthy knowledge ... — The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... a matter of desire, and the printer's case with bad copy to revise is better than "English Twenty-two" at Harvard. Henry George moused nights at the Quaker Apprentices' Library, and he also read Franklin's "Autobiography"; his mind was full of Poor Richard maxims, which he sprinkled through his diary; but best of all, with seven other printers he formed another "Junta," and they met twice a week to discuss "poetry, economics and Mormonism." It was very sophomoric, of course, but boys of eighteen who ... — Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... of my whims and fancies; and, in addition, with enough of my mother and enough of my father within me to make me veritably a cross-current and a contradiction, as I had said that I was in the opening sentence of my childish autobiography. ... — Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... a brain as sluggish as Caligula's was over-excitable; nevertheless he prosecuted literature with care, and published several works. Among these was a history, beginning with the death of Julius Caesar, in forty-three volumes, [2] an autobiography in eight, [3] "magis inepte quam ineleganter scriptum;" a learned defence of Cicero against Asinius Gallus's invective, besides several Greek writings. His philological studies and the innovations he tried to introduce have been referred to in ... — A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... years ago my husband told me that he had begun to write an Autobiography intended for publication, but not during his lifetime. He worked upon it at intervals, as his literary engagements permitted, but I found after his sudden death that he had only been able to carry it as far as his twenty-fourth year. Such a fragment seemed too brief for separate publication, and ... — Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... poet, except inferentially as the words of his critics may carry distinct impressions. After all, the justest estimate of Whitman and his book is his own. Whitman's puzzling characteristics are best understood if we realize that Leaves of Grass is an autobiography—and an extraordinarily candid one—of a man whose peculiar temperament found expression in prose-verse. His gentleness, his brusqueness, his egotism, his humility, his grossness, his finer nature, his crudeness, his eloquence, are all ... — Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... mother having died, the family life was broken up. In "Les Miserables" the early struggles of Marius are described; and this, the author has told us, may be considered autobiography. He has related how the young man lived in a garret; how he would sweep this barren room; how he would buy a pennyworth of cheese, waiting until dusk to get a loaf of bread, and slink home as furtively as if ... — Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... children. He was the fifteenth. He says in his autobiography, that his father died at the age of eighty-nine, and his mother at the age of eighty-five, and that neither were ever known to have any sickness except that of ... — The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... greatest public-school masters of our generation. A former colleague of mine, Mr. Henry W. Nevinson, used to speak to me in glowing terms of Mr. Gilkes, who was a master at Shrewsbury School when he was a boy there, and I note that the Rev. Dr. Horton in his "Autobiography" alludes to him as "the master at Shrewsbury to whom I owed most." Undoubtedly Mr. Gilkes's best work was done as Headmaster of Dulwich. The College has never known a greater head. Under him the whole place ... — War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... d'Argens made me a present of all his works, and on my asking him if I could congratulate myself on possessing the whole number, he said yes, with the exception of a fragment of autobiography which he had written in his youth, and which he ... — The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... scientific mind. "Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge." Where a man's emotions cease to accompany him in his investigations, he is not necessarily nearer the truth. Says Spencer, in the Preface to his Autobiography:—"In the genesis of a system of thought, the emotional nature is a large factor: perhaps as large a factor as the intellectual nature" (see pages 134, 141 of Vol. I., "Thoughts ... — Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... The autobiography which this book contains is that of a man who through the wonderful dealings of Providence has had a most remarkable experience. I have known the writer for about seventeen years, and always most favorably. ... — Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... him on. When Hamlin Garland turned his attention to literature, he decided to write truthfully of the western farmer's life and its great hardships in pioneer days, as well as its hopes and joys. In A Son of the Middle Border, an autobiography, from which "My Boyhood on the Prairie" is taken, he has given a most interesting record of experiences in the development of the Middle West. Mitchell County, where this scene is laid, ... — The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... clear for the two next steps, the concepts of causation and development. Here again why not follow the egocentric plan of starting with what the student knows? Ask him to write a brief but careful autobiography answering the questions—How have I come to be what I am? What influences personal or otherwise have played upon me?[34] The student is almost certain to lay hold of the principle of determining or controlling forces, and ... — College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... says Mr. Livesey in his autobiography, "though small, was like a palace; for none could excel my Jenny for cleanliness and order. I renovated the garden, and made it a pleasant place to walk in. On the loom I was most industrious, working from early in the morning often till ten, and sometimes later, at ... — Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... program in which time is provided for, say, breathing and other exercises in bed, bath, toilet, walk to business, meals, amusement, etc., with special notes and memoranda as to the particular faults of omission and commission to be corrected. One might also, as Benjamin Franklin records in his autobiography, keep a daily record for a week as to how nearly the program is lived up to. By dint of such and other stimuli, the transition in habits can be made, after which the "rules" cease to be rules, as carrying any sense of restriction, and become automatic ... — How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... before moral transgression was known. As the geologist wanders, and studies the records of nature, where earthquake, deluge, and volcano have exposed the structure of the globe and its organic remains in strata piled on strata, upon these, as upon so many pages of the earth's autobiography, he reads the history of a hundred races of animals which lived and died, leaving their bones layer above layer, in regular succession, centuries before the existence of man. It is evident, then, that, independent ... — The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... from the glimpses which it furnishes of the inner life of the Scottish people, and its bearing on what has been somewhat clumsily termed "the condition-of-the-country question." My sketches will, I trust, be recognised as true to fact and nature. And as I have never perused the autobiography of a working man of the more observant type, without being indebted to it for new facts and ideas respecting the circumstances and character of some portion of the people with which I had been less perfectly acquainted before, I ... — My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... "Harper's" was founded simply as a medium for selling the books issued from the Franklin Square House, and all advertisements from outsiders were declined. George P. Rowell, the dean of advertising agents, in his amusing autobiography, tells how Harper & Brothers in the early seventies refused an offer of $18,000 from the Howe Sewing Machine Company for a year's use of the last page of the magazine; and Mr. Rowell adds that he had this information from ... — Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... in French literary society. A few years later her relations with the poet Alfred De Musset provided the matter for what is now an historic episode. Her literary output was enormous, consisting of a hundred or more volumes of novels and stories, four volumes of autobiography, and six of correspondence. Yet everything that she wrote is marked by that richness, delicacy and power of style and of thought which constitutes her genius. "Consuelo," which appeared in 1844, is typical of all these in its sparkling dialogue, flowing ... — The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... an Autobiography By Marshall Saunders With an Introduction By Hezekiah Butterworth Of Youth's ... — Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... personal letters may constitute an autobiography, so the extracts from Colonial writings that follow tell the unique story of the fisheries of Virginia's great Tidewater. In them it is possible to trace the measured growth of a vital industry. The interspersed comments of the compiler are to be understood as mere annotations. ... — The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... sane and sober habit of mind that instantly and instinctively puts all mint and all cummin of all kinds into the second place, and all the weightier matters, both of law and of gospel, into the first place. I wasted myself on too nice points, laments Brea in his deep, honest, clear- eyed autobiography. I did not proportion my religious things aright. The laird of Brea does not say in as many words that he was wise in the penny and foolish in the pound, but that is exactly what ... — Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... and you ruin something of infinitely more importance than commerce; ideas should surely be preserved as carefully as cotton from the poisonous influence of a varnish intended to fit them for public consumption. "The time is come," says Mr. Mill in his autobiography, "in which it is the duty of all qualified persons to speak their minds about popular religious beliefs." The reason which he assigns is that they would thus destroy the "vulgar prejudice" that unbelief ... — Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... an interesting letter of yours to answer; but when you ask me to exchange biographies, you take an unfair advantage of the changes of scene and bustling movement of your own adventures. My autobiography would be like my best plays, fearfully long, and not divided into acts. Just consider this life of Wilde which you have just sent me, and which I finished ten minutes ago after putting aside everything else to read ... — Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... that Rabelais hit at her in the dialect of the "Limousin scholar." The Angoisses, which M. Reynier's acute examination shows to have been written by some one who must have known Boccaccio's Fiammetta (more than once Frenched about this time), is, or gives itself out to be, the autobiography of a girl of noble birth who, married at eleven years old and at first very fond of her husband, becomes at thirteen the object of much courtship from many gallants. Of these she selects, entirely on the love-at-first-sight ... — A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... but the fellows had as yet arrived only at the argumentative stage of exhilaration, and it so happened that the subject under discussion at once took Hunt's close attention. Mathewson had been reading the first volume of Goethe's autobiography, and was indulging in some strictures on his course in jilting Frederica and leaving the poor ... — Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... Government with the futility of a contest which the country had already realised, and which would have at once caused a change of administration if the House of Commons had been truly representative of the opinion of the country; "a sense of past error," wrote the Duke of Grafton in his autobiography, "and a conviction that the American war might terminate in further destruction to our armies, began from this time rapidly to insinuate itself into the minds of men. Their discourse was quite changed, though the majorities in Parliament were ... — George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... on 17 June 1867. Although he has since become Australia's most acclaimed writer, in his own lifetime his writing was often "on the side"—his "real" work being whatever he could find. His writing was frequently taken from memories of his childhood, especially at Pipeclay/Eurunderee. In his autobiography, he states that many of his characters were taken from the better class of diggers and bushmen he knew there. His experiences at this time deeply influenced his work, for it is interesting to note a number of descriptions and phrases that are identical in his autobiography ... — Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... In his autobiography, Dr. Cuyler tells how he "used to make nocturnal explorations of some of those satanic quarters" to keep public interest awake in the mission work at the Five Points. New Yorkers who remember the House of Industry of thirty years ago and who now look at Mulberry ... — The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... expression to his self-importance. But our specific objection to the poet is not met by this explanation. Even the horseman does not expect panegyrics of his profession to take the place of horseshoes. The inventor does not issue an autobiography in lieu of a new invention. The public would seem justified in reminding the poet that, having a reasonable amount of curiosity about human nature, it will eagerly devour the poet's biography, properly labeled, but only after he has forgotten ... — The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... famous statue of Perseus, Cellini experienced much difficulty in keeping the metal liquid. The account of this thrilling experience, told in his matchless autobiography, is too long to quote at this point; an interesting item, however, should be noted. Cellini used pewter as a solvent in the bronze which had hardened in the furnace. "Apprehending that the cause of ... — Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... him; she will prattle on about herself, or tell some funny anecdote of how she was tumbled out into the snow, or how she spilled her glass of claret at dinner, or how she got just too late to the lecture; and while she is thus absorbed in her little improvised autobiography, the shy man gets hold of himself, and ceases to be afraid of her. This is ... — Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... school-master in the place who could read Latin was an event. Years after, when the pure gold of fame was no longer a glimmering vision or a current of fate, but a wonderful fact, Abraham Lincoln wrote of such visits as Jasper's in the settlement a curious sentence in an odd hand in an autobiography, which we ... — In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... a book and a literary production, an uninterrupted confession; while, in the very fact that he allows himself to write confessions at all about his faith, there already lies a confession. Presumably, every one seems to have the right to compile an autobiography after his fortieth year; for the humblest amongst us may have experienced things, and may have seen them at such close quarters, that the recording of them may prove of use and value to the thinker. But to write a confession of one's ... — Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... reader, that I shall inflict on you a complete autobiography. It is only the great ones of the earth who are entitled to claim attention to the record of birth and parentage and school-days, etcetera. To trace my ancestry back through "the Conquerors" to Adam, would be presumptuous as well as impossible. Nevertheless, for the sake ... — Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... admit your right to say such things to me, Mr. Haddon," I protested, after the reproach had been well rubbed in. "I have given you good service for small pay, and there was no reason why I should have furnished you with an autobiography when you didn't ask it. In the circumstances it seems that I am the one to be aggrieved, but I'll waive the right to defend myself if you'll tell me where ... — Branded • Francis Lynde
... even more admire "the lifelong and heroic literary labours" of my fellow-men, patiently clearing up in words their loves and their contentions, and speaking their autobiography daily to their wives, were it not for a circumstance which lessens their difficulty and my admiration by equal parts. For life, though largely, is not entirely carried on by literature. We are subject to physical passions and contortions; the voice breaks and changes, and speaks by unconscious ... — Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... judgment, restraint, what the French called mesure; excellent traits, which the College attained with singular success, so that its graduates could commonly be recognized by the stamp, but such a type of character rarely lent itself to autobiography. In effect, the school created a type but not a will. Four years of Harvard College, if successful, resulted in an autobiographical blank, a mind on which only ... — The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the pioneer; Louisiana, St. Louis, and New Orleans,—to cover this ground, to picture the passions and politics of the time, to bring the counter influence of the French Revolution as near as possible to reality, has been a three years' task. The autobiography of David Ritchie is as near as I can get to its solution, and I have a ... — The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... book—a sort of autobiography. Not that her life, as she modestly said, was worth writing about, but that the progress of the Cause she had devoted her life to could hardly be illustrated in a better way than with an account of that life; of the ideas she had found current in her girlhood; ... — The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... kind of errant love for the improvident and adventurous Esaus of the Earth. I think they smell a wilder fragrance than I do, and taste sweeter things, and I have thought, therefore, of beginning a kind of fragrant autobiography, a chronicle of all the good odours and flavours that ever I have had in ... — Great Possessions • David Grayson
... edition of his Dogmatik in 1822, that he had never doubted the authenticity of the gospel, and had published his Probabilia only to draw attention to the subject, and to call forth a more complete defence of its genuineness. Bretschneider remarks in his autobiography that the publication of this work had the effect of preventing his appointment as successor to Karl C. Tittmann in Dresden, the minister Detlev von Einsiedel (1773-1861) denouncing him as the "slanderer of John" ... — Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... The well-known autobiography, entitled "Narrative of the Lord's Dealings with George Muller," had been, and was still being, so greatly used by God in the edification of believers and the conversion of unbelievers that I hesitated to countenance any attempt to supersede or even supplement ... — George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... being in his turn "temporarily relieved," and consigned to that obscurity which is the Nemesis of major-generals. He is more fortunate, however, than some of his compeers, in experiencing almost at once the double resurrection of autobiography and reappointment. Whether his new career be more or less successful than the old one, the autobiography is at least worth printing, so far as it goes. Had an instalment of it appeared when the siege of Charleston was at its height, it would have been translated ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... and does not want for natural sense: but he is also very crude,—and here and there not far from stupid, such his continual haste, and slobbery manner of working up those Hundred and odd Volumes of his:—[See his Autobiography, which forms Beitrage, B. vi. (the biggest and ... — History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... claiming the honours of an athlete; one may desire to be honest and not count himself a saint. My object in thus shadowing out what seems to me my present condition of mind, is merely to render it intelligible to my reader how an autobiography might come to be written without rendering the writer justly liable to the charge of that overweening, or self-conceit, which might be involved in the mere conception ... — Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... in Devonshire; studied at Cambridge, and professor there; spent much time and money over the invention of a calculating machine; wrote on "The Economy of Manufactures and Machinery," and an autobiography entitled "Passages from the Life of a Philosopher"; in his later years was famous for his ... — The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Public Record Office, Admiralty 1:3666, p. 162. The writer of this report, George Bramston, LL.D., was a notable practitioner of the civil law, and from 1702 to 1710 was master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. His uncle writes of him in his autobiography, a few years before this, "George is doctor of law, ... fellow of Trinity Hall, and is admitted at the Commons, and lives there in some practice, but very good repute." Autobiography of Sir John Bramston, ... — Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... could be made, not merely to present humorous situations, but to exhibit a special kind of humour itself—to make the writer as it were the hero without his ever appearing as character in Tristram, or to humorise autobiography as in the Sentimental Journey. And last of all (whether it was his greatest achievement or not is matter of opinion), he showed the novel of purpose in a form specially appealing to his contemporaries—the purpose being to exhibit, ... — The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... to be read as a novel: it is to be studied as an autobiography, a prophecy, a record of aspirations, disguised under a series of incidents which are flung together with no more regard to the unities than a pack of shuffled playing-cards. I can do nothing better than let him picture himself, for it is impossible ... — The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... best humor. He sent for a bottle of wine, and filled for Riemer and me; he himself drank Marienbad water. He seemed to have appointed this evening for looking over, with Riemer, the manuscript of the continuation of his autobiography, perhaps in order to improve it here and there, in point of expression. "Let Eckermann stay and hear it too," said Goethe; which words I was very glad to hear, and he then laid the manuscript before Riemer, who began to read, commencing with ... — The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... names than Mrs. Oliphant's, but surely none that will shine with a tenderer and purer radiance. Mrs. Oliphant was an indefatigable worker and had the spirit of true knighthood beating in her womanly bosom. Of her autobiography the Philadelphia Ledger says: "The volume is unique in interest and a most valuable and helpful story of a noble and honorable life. Mrs. Coghill has the best equipment as an editor: discretion, taste, a word of connection wherever ... — The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... which this excellent picture is painted is taken from a passage in the autobiography[004] of the celebrated Sir William Smith[005] of his life when a schoolboy: we transcribe the passage: "One day Bill Tomkins[006] and I were left alone in the house, the old doctor being out; after playing a number of pranks ... — The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... English edition, I have reason to know—thanks to the merit of Cruikshank's original and felicitous sketches—excited the greatest delight in the mind of Chamisso. In his autobiography he says that "Peter" had been kindly received in Germany, but in ... — Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... famous Madame Guyon (1648-1717), who—in addition to many other works—wrote a very detailed autobiography. She lived with her husband, whom she treated with coldness, finding her sole joy in her spiritual intercourse with God. "I desire only the divine love which thrills the soul with inexpressible bliss, the love which seems to melt my whole being." God burns her with His fire and still trembling ... — The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... detail the events of my insignificant existence: to the first ten years of my life I have given almost as many chapters. But this is not to be a regular autobiography. I am only bound to invoke Memory where I know her responses will possess some degree of interest; therefore I now pass a space of eight years almost in silence: a few lines only are necessary to keep up the ... — Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... as great as his strength and agility. He loved all God's creatures, and cruelty to any of them always aroused his indignation. Only once did he ever attempt to kill any of the game in the woods, which the family considered necessary for their subsistence. He refers to this occasion in an autobiography, written by him in the third person, ... — Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... autobiography, written about forty years later, comes to an end at this point. It is a curious document, full of the strong religious sentiment by which he came to be distinguished; tracing the finger of Providence in all that happened to him, even ... — The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... but half a dozen words on May 26, according to Feuerbach, by July 7 he had furnished Binder with his history—pretty quick work! Later in 1828 he was able to write that history himself. In 1829 he completed a work of autobiography. ... — Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... pithy and inspired bits of autobiography in warm, intimate tones. At their hotel steps she sighed with a ... — Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... ME one day in 1935 that Gilbert had written the beginning of an autobiography some years before but had laid it aside. She had, she said, a superstitious feeling about urging him to get on with it—as though the survey of his life and the end of his life would somehow be tied together. I urged her to get over this feeling ... — Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... of a horse; how he was ill treated and well cared for. The experiences of Black Beauty, Ginger, and Merrylegs are extremely interesting. Wherever children are, whether boys or girls, this Autobiography should be. It inculcates habits of kindness to all members of the animal creation. The literary merit ... — Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... its traces in all his verse. He went to school at Verona, where for his dullness he was nick-named the "mole," and afterwards he passed on to the University of Padua to study law, apparently to please his father, for in the charming autobiography prefixed to his collected poems he quotes his father as saying:—"My son, be not enamored of this coquette, Poesy; for with all her airs of a great lady, she will play thee some trick of a faithless grisette. ... — Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... company." He used to say, with a drollness which did not strike me until years afterwards, "Boys, I and Cap'n Towle is goin' to trot out 'the Greys' to-morroh." Though strictly honest in all business dealings, his tropical imagination, whenever he strayed into the fenceless fields of autobiography, left much to be desired in the way of accuracy. Compared with Sol Holmes on such occasions, Ananias was a person of morbid integrity. Sol Holmes's tragic end was in singular contrast with his sunny temperament. ... — An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of hotel choosing,—if you love quiet, heavy bills, and the best table-d'hote in the city, go, O stranger! to the "Hotel des Princes;" it is close to the Boulevard, and convenient for Frascati's. The "Hotel Mirabeau" possesses scarcely less attraction; but of this you will find, in Mr. Bulwer's "Autobiography of Pelham," a faithful and complete account. "Lawson's Hotel" has likewise its merits, as also the "Hotel de Lille," which may be described as a "second ... — The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... other letters which have thus far seen the light of day will be found in J. E. Oster's "Political and Economic Doctrines of John Marshall" (New York, 1914). Here also will be found a copy of Marshall's will, of the autobiography which he prepared in 1818 for Delaplaine's "Repository" but which was never published there, and of his eulogy of his wife. The two principal sources of Marshall's anecdotes are the "Southern Literary Messenger," volume II, p.181 ff., and Henry Howe's "Historical Collections of Virginia" ... — John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... MUST know something of thousands of works — in fact, he was a wonderful and very original book in himself, which, if it had ever been written out and published, would have never died. His was one of the instances which give the world good cause to regret that the art of autobiography is of all others the one least taught or studied. There are few characters more interesting than those in which the practical man of business is combined with the scholar, because of the contrasts, or varied play of light and shadow, in them, and this was, ... — The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... his periodical attacks of asthma he was sent alone to Moosehead Lake in Maine. On the stagecoach that took him the last stage of the journey he met two boys of about his own age. They quickly found, he says, in his "Autobiography", that he was "a foreordained and predestined victim" for their rough teasing, and they "industriously proceeded to make life miserable" for their fellow traveler. At last young Roosevelt could endure their persecutions no ... — Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... and binned wine for more than five years. His health failing him, his uncle turned him adrift in the world, with only two guineas, the fruits of his five years' service, in his pocket. During the next seven years of his life he endured many vicissitudes and hardships. Yet he says, in his autobiography, "in my poor and obscure lodgings, at eighteenpence a week, I indulged in study, and often read in bed during the winter evenings, because I could not afford a fire." Travelling on foot to Bath, he there obtained an engagement as a ... — Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... assume that his life is worth the venture of a record in the form of an autobiography suggests a degree of self-conceit of which I am not guilty. From my own initiative this would never have been written, and the first suggestion that I should write it, coming from a man of such experience in books and ... — The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... body. Beauty and virginity are insisted on in various passages in the magical papyri (see Abt op. cit., p. 185) as necessary in the boy through whom the god is to speak. Cp. also Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography (Symond's Translation, ... — The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... religious feelings and religious impulses must be its subject, and I must confine myself to those more developed subjective phenomena recorded in literature produced by articulate and fully self-conscious men, in works of piety and autobiography. Interesting as the origins and early stages of a subject always are, yet when one seeks earnestly for its full significance, one must always look to its more completely evolved and perfect forms. It follows from this that the documents that will most concern us will be those of the men who were ... — The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... by Carl Czerny in his autobiography in 1842. Concerning the time at which the remark was made, Czerny says: "It was said about 1803, when B. had composed op. 28 (the pianoforte sonata in D) to his friend Krumpholz (a violinist). Shortly afterward there appeared the sonatas (now op. 31) in which a partial ... — Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... suggested by the reading of some extracts from the autobiography of a brilliant lady who had much to tell us about a number of interesting people. There was a quality in that autobiography which seemed to demand parody, and no doubt the autobiographer who cannot wait for posterity and perspective will pardon a ... — Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... few books," he records in the exquisite fragment of autobiography he has left us, "that to read them once or twice was nothing. We thought they were all to be ... — Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... circumstances appeared to play a large part in this queer autobiography, and saved the necessity ... — A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... so much during those years of early maturity, that, as in almost all such eases, his nature was corrupted. Pity that some self-made intellectual man of our time has not flung in the world's teeth a truthful autobiography. Scawthorne worked himself up to a position which had at first seemed unattainable; what he paid for the success was loss of all his pure ideals, of his sincerity, of his disinterestedness, of the fine perceptions to which he was born. Probably no one who is ... — The Nether World • George Gissing
... "perpetual life." But if "to live in hearts we leave behind is not to die," to be worthy of such memorial we must have done or said something that blessed the living or benefited coming generations. Hence autobiography is the record, for "books are as tombstones made by the living, but destined soon to remind ... — Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... finer book of the same order, Lord Lindsay's Christian Art, now out of print, but to be found in public libraries. M. Rio's work, De l'Art Chretien (let the purchaser beware of two volumes of Epilogue, which are autobiography), is a full and admirable history of religious art: it is written from a purely Roman Catholic point of view, and his opinions are deeply imbued by prejudice. The reader will soon perceive this, however, and be upon his guard, remembering that, ... — Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Soltikoff, which was the first, (if we may be sure that she had a first,)—and which seems clearly to have been elevated, if not purified, by a true and deep affection. That it was so appears not by any protestation or even calm assertion of her own, which in an autobiography might be reasonably doubted, but from the unstudied tenderness of her allusions to him; from the fact, which indirectly appears, that he first cooled towards her, and the pang—not of wounded vanity—which this gave her; and yet more unmistakably ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... unfastened from his child's soul—separated from himself. The object of his youthful faith has no more meaning for him. He understands no longer, and it is all one to him that he does not. Thus, told by himself, does this first crisis of Augustin's life emerge from the autobiography; and it takes on a general significance. Once for all, under a definite form, and to a certain degree classic, he has diagnosed with his subtle experience of doctor of souls the pubescent crisis ... — Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... reflected, provided you are unhampered by prejudice, are fairly in funds and know the ropes, even grimy fog-bound London is, in this particular connection, by no means to be sneezed at. And truly Poppy's autobiography during the said month would have made extremely merry reading, amounting in some aspects to a positive classic—though of the kind hardly suited as a basis of instruction for the pupils of a young ladies' ... — The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... I would say by way of preface. And I think I may also give in a few words the main incidents in my father's life after he completed his autobiography. ... — Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... in Defoe's life we are indebted to himself. He had all the vaingloriousness of exuberant vitality, and was animated in the recital of his own adventures. Scattered throughout his various works are the materials for a tolerably complete autobiography. This is in one respect an advantage for any one who attempts to give an account of his life. But it has a counterbalancing disadvantage in the circumstance that there is grave reason to doubt his ... — Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... cantos were not completed until two years later. The third canto was added in 1835, when the poem was published in the first volume of his 'Curl-Papers' (Papillotes). These recollections, in fact, constitute Jasmin's autobiography, and we are indebted to them for the description we have already given of ... — Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... I toss the "Last Leaf" on my probably over-large accumulation of printed pages. What I have set down is in no way an autobiography. It is simply the presentment of the panorama of nearly fourscore momentous years as unrolled before one pair of eyes. Whether the eyes have served their owner well or ill the gentle reader will ... — The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... autobiography was written by Mr. Lincoln's own hand at the request of J. W. Fell of Springfield, Ill., December 20, 1859. In the note which accompanied it the writer says: "Herewith is a little sketch, as you requested. There is not much of it, for the reason, ... — Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... his early life, since that part of his history is better known than that of any other of our great men, from the charming autobiography which he began to write but never cared to finish. He was born in Boston, January 17, 1706, the youngest but two of seventeen children. His father was a narrow-minded English Puritan, but respectable and conscientious,—a tallow-chandler by trade; ... — Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... with the same set of building blocks. Lots of 'em will stake you to a dime and chop-suey; and a few of 'em will play Caliph to the tune of a top sirloin; but every one of 'em will stand over you till they screw your autobiography out of you with foot notes, appendix and unpublished fragments. Oh, I know what to do when I see victuals coming toward me in little old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I strike the asphalt three times with my forehead and get ready to spiel yarns for my supper. I claim descent from the late Tommy Tucker, ... — The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry |