The "Public Ledger" of Philadelphia, and its owner, are known the world over. Would we see the large-hearted, hospitable millionaire, who has come to honor through his own industry...
On January 6, 1883, Paris presented a sad and imposing spectacle. Her shops were closed; her public buildings and her homes were draped in black. Her streets were solid with hundre...
Few men come to greatness. Most drift on with the current, having no special plan nor aim. They live where their fathers lived, taking no thought beyond their neighborhood or city,...
If America had been asked who were to be her most munificent givers in the nineteenth century, she would scarcely have pointed to two grocer's boys, one in a little country store a...
The quaint old city of Salzburg, Austria, built into the mountain-side, is a Mecca for all who love music, and admire the immortal Mozart. When he was alive, his native city allowe...
Lived from 1330-1376 One of the most famous warriors of the Middle Ages was Edward the Black Prince. He was so called because he wore black armor in battle. The Black Prince was th...
For a great work God raises up a great man. Usually he is trained in the hard school of poverty, to give him courage and perseverance. Usually he stands alone among a great multitu...
The history of inventors is generally the same old struggle with poverty. Sir Richard Arkwright, the youngest of thirteen children, with no education, a barber, shaving in a cellar...
A little way from London, England, at Denmark Hill, looking toward the Crystal Palace, is a mansion which is fit for royalty. The grounds, covering from thirty to forty acres, are...
In the town of Montbeliard, France, then belonging to the Duke of Wuertemberg, August 23, 1769, was born the founder of the Science of Comparative Anatomy; the greatest naturalist...
Samuel F. B. Morse was born at the foot of Breed's Hill, Charlestown, Mass., April 27, 1791. He was the eighth child in a family of eleven children, all of whom, except three sons,...
There will come a time when the name of Aaron Burr will be cleared from the prejudice which now surrounds it, when he will stand in the public estimation side by side with Alexande...
It was on the 24th of July that we left Stockholm, the Venice of the North, built on her nine islands, for the famous university town of Upsala, Sweden. The ride, of about two hour...
"There's no chance to get in there. There's six thousand persons inside, and two thousand outside." This was said to Dr. Magoun, President of Iowa College, and myself, after we had...
There are four women who may be said to have deeply influenced the life of Napoleon. These four are the only ones who need to be taken into account by the student of his imperial c...
The possibilities of American life are strikingly illustrated by the fact that the two names at the head of the army and navy, Grant and Farragut, represent self-made men. The latt...
Since Samuel Johnson toiled in Grub Street, London, literature has scarcely furnished a more pathetic or inspiring illustration of struggle to success than that of Bayard Taylor. B...
(1809-1849) A POLISH LAD WHO BECAME FAMOUS Many famous men were born in the year 1809. We are proud to number among them several of our own countrymen. President Lincoln was born i...
Perhaps some readers will consider this story inconsistent with those that have preceded it. Yet, as it is little known to most readers and as it is perhaps unique in the history o...
There is one famous woman whom history condems while at the same time it partly hides the facts which might mitigate the harshness of the judgment that is passed upon her. This wom...
Coleridge said, "Had not Davy been the first chemist, he probably would have been the first poet of his age." Said Professor Silliman's "American Journal of Science and Arts:" "His...
Perhaps no public man in the English-speaking world, in the last century, was so widely and intimately known as Charles Dickens. From his eighteenth year, when he won his first suc...
To most persons, Tennyson was a remote and romantic figure. His homes in the Isle of Wight and at Aldworth had a dignified seclusion about them which was very appropriate to so gre...
Mary Stuart and Cleopatra are the two women who have most attracted the fancy of poets, dramatists, novelists, and painters, from their own time down to the present day. In some re...
The old maxim, that "the gods reward all things to labor," has had fit illustration in Meissonier. His has been a life of constant, unvaried toil. He came to Paris a poor, unknown...
Galileo studied and found out the truth that the earth moves around the sun, and died recanting it. Buffon, the great French naturalist, studied, and ascertained that the earth has...
It was said of Napoleon long ago that he could govern emperors and kings, but that not even he could rule his relatives. He himself once declared: "My family have done me far more...
On Wednesday, April 26, 1882, sitting in the North Transept of Westminster Abbey, I looked upon a sad and impressive scene. Under the dome stood an oaken coffin, quite covered with...
One sunny morning in June, I went out five miles from the great manufacturing city of Birmingham, England, to the pretty town called Erdington, to see the Mason Orphanage. I found...
The royal families of Europe are widely known, yet not all of them are equally renowned. Thus, the house of Romanoff, although comparatively young, stands out to the mind with a so...