The Gentleman from Everywhere

Already there were more children than potatoes in her hut of logs, and yet, another unwelcome guest was coming, to whom fate had ordained that it would have been money in his po...

My father and brothers constructed a "prairie schooner" from our scanty belongings, and one forlorn morning in early autumn, with the skeleton horse and cow harnessed tandem for...

It seems but yesterday, although more than a half century ago, that I, a puny boy, stood on the hilltop and looked for the first time upon this, the earliest home of which I hav...

It was the custom in R----, and is now to quite an extent elsewhere, to elect as school committee those especially noted for their ignorance and unfitness for the duties, perhap...

Dear old fathers and mothers! Of all the people in this world, they look through the rubbish of our imperfections, and see in us the divine ideal of our natures, love in us not...

In the early spring came the close of school term, and teacher, pupils and parents parted with mutual regrets. My pecuniary reward was small; but I shall always remember with pl...

Previous to my arrival at this ancient seat of learning, founded and endowed for the perpetuation and propagation of the doctrines of our denomination, I had never entertained t...

I had cherished the delusive hope that my university diploma would be the open sesame to any exalted position to which I might aspire; but I found there was a multitude of compe...

My pupils at the reform school were from the dens and hovels of the Bowery, while those at S---- were from the palaces of Fifth Avenue; but to my utter astonishment, the childre...

At the close of the school in July, 1870, a friend of mine, Doctor B----, of Boston, and I, attracted by the alluring prospectus of a new town near Plymouth, North Carolina, vis...

I gladly returned, like a tired child, to the kindly faces and hearty greetings of my loving and much loved father, mother, brothers, green fields, and all the beautiful childre...

The fates, who lead the willing-and drive the unwilling, guided me to the old time firm of B. & T. publishers. They were overwhelmed with applications from the great army of the...

By and by unwonted silence and anxiety reigned in our house. The family doctor remained all night, then a faint cry was heard, and little baby May came into this world of ours,

But we must descend from the sublime to the stern realities of this workaday world. Of all the people on this earth, a lone, lorn widower with three babies on his hands, is the...

One day I was introduced by a friend to a very attractive lady school-teacher, who combined with superior domestic training, elocutionary and musical accomplishments. She was so...

I had always been somewhat prominent in politics, being President of the Republican Club in our town, and that autumn I was hired by Dr. George B. Loring to conduct his campaign...

This season there broke out in our community, as elsewhere, what has always appeared to me, to be a distemper, misnamed by its crafty creator, "Christian Science." Unchristian s...

After these scientific investigations, my wife and I left New England covered with snow and swept by fierce, freezing winds to find this far-famed peninsular basking in deliciou...

This led to a pleasant conversation, during which he introduced us to his wife as being one of the aborigines. We expressed much interest in this statement, and finally persuade...

My ship of life was laden to the water's edge with labors of varying utility. We founded the Apollo Club, a musical and literary organization including in its membership the mos...

Soon after my encounter at S---- with the unspeakable W----, I met Major St. A----, who gave a cordial invitation to myself and family to become his guests in his new town of T-...

In many particulars this year of our Lord, 1883, was a sad one for us all. The pecuniary loss, resultant upon the town-building disaster, was severe; but the revelation which ca...

Here on elevated lands around a pretty clearwater lake, directly on the Florida Central and Peninsula Railroad, and near a famous grotto extending deep into the earth, at the bo...

This year of our Lord, 1886, brought an infinitely greater sorrow than the mere financial losses which pressed so hardly upon us in connection with our Florida endeavors. On Chr...

We found in this town of W----, a moribund Unitarian Church, with scarcely a handful of attendants, listening once a week to a lifeless minister and an asthmatic harmonium accom...

In our Boston home, there came to us one of the most wonderful and inspiring experiences ever vouchsafed to mortals beneath the stars; an experience which solved forever for us...

It seems to be an unwritten law of human life that every great joy shall be quickly followed by a great sorrow. The materialized forms of our spirit loved-ones had scarcely vani...

This delightful journey was a wonderful revelation of the greatness, power, and grandeur of this glorious republic in which we live. I gazed with amazement for many hours as we...

In the following May, 1896, I took a sky-scraping journey to the great states of Washington and Oregon. The climbing of Mt. Shasta and the Siskyo range by train presented sublim...

I had secured the adoption of our dictionaries in every county visited by me, and now the publishers desired me to remain on the Pacific coast permanently, without salary, relyi...

When the previous thirty chapters were in press, the conviction was forced upon me that any book which touched upon Florida without a description of its poor whites called "Crac...

I seemed to be trying to awake from a trance in which I had been the unwilling instrument, compelled by an intelligence extraneous to myself to expose to an incredulous public t...