We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.

Whenever a total eclipse of the sun was visible in an accessible region parties were sent out to observe it.

Until I was four years old I lived in the house of my paternal grandfather, about two miles from the pretty little village of Wallace, at the mouth of the river of that name.

My father was the most rational and the most dispassionate of men.

My father followed, during most of his life, the precarious occupation of a country school teacher.

As years passed away I have formed the habit of looking back upon that former self as upon another person, the remembrance of whose emotions has been a solace in adversity and added zest to the enjoyment of prosperity.

I finally reached the conclusion that mathematics was the study I was best fitted to follow, though I did not clearly see in what way I should turn the subject to account.