All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography The Red Leaves of a Human Heart

Old age is the verdict of life. I am now an old woman. Many people tell me so, and there is the indisputable evidence of my eighty-second birthday, the twenty-ninth of next Marc...

One voyage across the ocean is very much like another, and the majority of my readers have doubtless taken several. Some may even remember the old steamship _Atlantic_, for I th...

"What is our Life? A strange mixture of good and evil; of ill-assorted fates and pathetic acquiescences; and of the overpowering certainty of daily needs, against the world of t...

My readers must now be familiar with my surroundings, and after a lot of consideration I have decided to relate much of my future experience from the diaries I wrote in the very...

I was greatly delighted with Penrith. It was such a complete change from Shipley, and youth is always sure that change must mean something better. In the first place the town wa...

The next day was the worst we had yet seen. It poured incessantly, and when the rain ceased at nightfall, it was followed by a fog so dense that it seemed palpable. Every room i...

I had written home many times since we left Memphis, and had fully described all that we had seen and heard, as well as all that had happened to us, and I had received several l...

In this year 1887, I finished "The Border Shepherdess" and "The Master of His Fate" with my usual accompaniment of poems and articles for the papers. On April twenty-fourth I no...

"This is the scene of combat, not of rest, Man's is laborious happiness at best; On this side death his labors never cease, His joys are joys of conquest, not of peace."

With renunciation life begins. For nineteen years I had been a receiver: I was now to learn the grace of surrender, and of giving up. I was to drink the cup of pain, and to go t...

After my return we had to consider the winter. During the previous winter we had suffered much from the severe cold, it being impossible to warm the house, when the thermometer...

"A place Before his eyes appeared, sick, noisome, dark, A Lazar house it seemed, wherein were laid Numbers of those diseased; Dire was the tossing, deep the groans, despair Tend...

"'Tis not for nothing that we Life pursue. It pays our hopes with something still that's new; Each day's a gift we ne'er enjoyed before, Like travelers, we're pleased with seein...

Events that are predestined require but little management. They manage themselves. They slip into place while we sleep, and suddenly we are aware that the thing we fear to attem...

"I must tell all. I cannot be unfaithful to my past. If I cut it away, I am but half myself. I wish also faith in the years to come, and those lofty delights which defy the tomb."

"The intellectual aroma of the building, its subtle Library essence, and redolence of Morocco leather, printer's ink and paper, all blended and mellowed with the learned dust of...

We left New Orleans that evening, and, on the second morning thereafter, we were far out on the Gulf of Mexico. The blessed north wind was gently rocking _The Lone Star_. I coul...

"The Family Life is romantic because it is uncertain. Every member of it likes different work and different play. These differences make the household bracing. Those who want to...

I was nearly thirty-nine years old when I became a student at the Astor and began a life so different from the lives I had lived in Glasgow, Chicago, Austin and Galveston, that...

"Love is the secret of life. Love redeemeth. Love lifts up. Love enlightens. Love advances the soul. Love hath everlasting remembrance. Love is a ransom, and the tears thereof a...

Before I was three years old my father removed to Yorkshire, to Shipley, in the West Riding. I never can write or speak those two last words, "West Riding," without a sensible r...

As soon as I saw Ripon, I disliked the place. There were no hills to which I could lift up my eyes, it was a little town squatting among fat green meadows, and by the still wate...

I was sixteen years and five months old, when I left home to go to Downham Market, and take my place among the workers of the world. The thought pleased me. I was tired of being...

Late in August I had a letter from Miss Berners saying, she was now at home in Richmond, and wished me to come to her, as soon as I could. This summons to duty was pleasant, alt...

I entered this incarnation on March the twenty-ninth, A.D. 1831, at the ancient town of Ulverston, Lancashire, England. My soul came with me. This is not always the case. Every...

We took leave of the Isle of Man with heavy hearts, and sailed direct from Douglas to Whitehaven, landing there in the evening of a wet August day. The town was finely situated,...