My first undertaking in the way of scientific experiment was in the field of economics and psychology.

So far as the economic condition of society and the general mode of living and thinking were concerned, I might claim to have lived in the time of the American Revolution.

I was taught the alphabet by my aunts before I was four years old, and I was reading the Bible in class and beginning geography when I was six.

Though born in Nova Scotia, I am of almost pure New England descent.

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.

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

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