Although he had only a few months’ regular schooling, at ten Thomas Alva Edison had read and thought more than many youths of twenty. Gibbon’s “Rome,” Hume’s “England,” Sears’s “History of the World,” besides several books on chemistry,–a subject in which he was even then deeply interested,–were familiar friends. Yet he was not, by any […]

The air was keen and biting, and traces of snow still lingered on the ground and sparkled on the tree tops in the morning sun. But the happy, rosy-cheeked children, lately freed from the restraints of city life, who played in the old garden in Concord, Massachusetts, that bright spring morning many years ago, heeded […]

Invincible determination, and a right nature, are the levers that move the world.–PORTER. Born a slave, with the feelings and possibilities of a man, but with no rights above the beast of the field, Fred Douglass gave the world one of the most notable examples of man’s power over circumstances. He had no knowledge of […]

Opposite the entrance to the Sevres Museum in the old town of Sevres, in France, stands a handsome bronze statue of Bernard Palissy, the potter. Within the museum are some exquisite pieces of pottery known as “Palissy ware.” They are specimens of the art of Palissy, who spent the best years of his life toiling […]

It is February, 1492. A poor man, with gray hair, disheartened and dejected, is going out of the gate from the beautiful Alhambra, in Granada, on a mule. Ever since he was a boy, he has been haunted with the idea that the earth is round. He has believed that the pieces of carved wood, […]

A picturesque, as well as pathetic figure, was Henry Clay, the little “Mill Boy of the Slashes,” as he rode along on the old family horse to Mrs. Darricott’s mill. Blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked, and bare-footed, clothed in coarse shirt and trousers, and a time-worn straw hat, he sat erect on the bare back of the horse, […]

“Look, Grandfather; see what the letters have done!” exclaimed a delighted boy, as he picked up the piece of parchment in which Grandfather Coster had carried the bark letters cut from the trees in the grove, for the instruction and amusement of his little grandsons. “See what the letters have done!” echoed the old man. […]

The teakettle was singing merrily over the fire; the good aunt was bustling round, on housewifely cares intent, and her little nephew sat dreamily gazing into the glowing blaze on the kitchen hearth. Presently the teakettle ceased singing, and a column of steam came rushing from its pipe. The boy started to his feet, raised […]

He was a famous artist whom kings and queens and emperors delighted to honor. The emperor of all the Russias had sent him an affectionate letter, written by his own hand; the empress, a magnificent emerald ring set with diamonds; the king of his own beloved Norway, who had listened reverently, standing with uncovered head, […]

“Without vision the people perish” Without a high ideal an individual never climbs. Keep your eyes on the mountain top, and, though you may stumble and fall many times in the ascent, though great bowlders, dense forests, and roaring torrents may often bar the way, look right on, never losing sight of the light which […]

I. THE FIRST TURNING POINT David Farragut was acting as cabin boy to his father, who was on his way to New Orleans with the infant navy of the United States. The boy thought he had the qualities that make a man. “I could swear like an old salt,” he says, “could drink as stiff […]

The teeming life of the streets has vanished; the voices of the children have died away into silence; the artisan has dropped his tools, the artist has laid aside his brush, the sculptor his chisel. Night has spread her wings over the scene. The queen city of Greece is wrapped in slumber. But, in the […]

“Try to come home a somebody!” Long after Leon Gambetta had left the old French town of Cahors, where he was born October 30, 1838, long after the gay and brilliant streets of Paris had become familiar to him, did the parting words of his idolized mother ring in his ears, “Try to come home […]

“Sir, I am a prisoner of war, and demand to be treated as such,” was the spirited reply of Andrew Jackson to a British officer who had commanded him to clean his boots. This was characteristic of the future hero of New Orleans, and president of the United States, whose independent spirit rebelled at the […]

Perhaps some would feel inclined to ridicule rather than applaud the patience of a poor Chinese woman who tried to make a needle from a rod of iron by rubbing it against a stone. It is doubtful whether she succeeded or not, but, so the story runs, the sight of the worker plying her seemingly […]

Clad in a homespun tow shirt, shrunken, butternut-colored, linsey-woolsey pantaloons, battered straw hat, and much-mended jacket and shoes, with ten dollars in his pocket, and all his other worldly goods packed in the bundle he carried on his back, Horace Greeley, the future founder of the New York Tribune, started to seek his fortune in […]

A kindly act is a kernel sown,That will grow to a goodly tree,Shedding its fruit when time has flownDown the gulf of Eternity. JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY. In the restless desire for acquisition,–acquisition of money, of power, or of fame,–there is danger of selfishness, self-absorption, closing the doors of our hearts against the demands of brotherly […]

“Jim, you’ve too good a head on you to be a wood chopper or a canal driver,” said the captain of the canal boat for whom young Garfield had engaged to drive horses along the towpath. “Jim” had always loved books from the time when, seated on his father’s knee, he had with his baby […]

HOW A POOR, UNTAUGHT FARMER’S BOY BECAME AN ARTIST “I will paint or die!” So stoutly resolved a poor, friendless boy, on a far-away Ohio farm, amid surroundings calculated to quench rather than to foster ambition. He knew not how his object was to be accomplished, for genius is never fettered by details. He only […]

“But I am only nineteen years old, Mr. Riggs,” and the speaker looked questioningly into the eyes of his companion, as if he doubted his seriousness in asking him to become a partner in his business. Mr. Riggs was not joking, however, and he met George Peabody’s perplexed gaze smilingly, as he replied: “That is […]