The reports of the eclipse parties not only described the scientific observations in great detail, but also the travels and experiences, and were sometimes marked by a piquancy not common in official documents.

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.

I had not yet gotten into the world of light. But I felt as one who, standing outside, could knock against the wall and hear an answering knock from within.

James Edward Oliver might have been one of the great mathematicians of his time had he not been absolutely wanting in the power of continuous work.

A few years later the Naval Academy was founded at Annapolis, and a similar course was pursued to provide it with a corps of instructors.

The beginning of 1856 found me teaching in the family of a planter named Bryan, residing in Prince George County, Md., some fifteen or twenty miles from Washington.

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