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

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

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 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.

The time was not yet ripe for the growth of mathematical science among us, and any development that might have taken place in that direction was rudely stopped by the civil war.

In 1860 a total eclipse of the sun was visible in British America.

Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never be able to cope.