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Mohandas was the youngest of the six children of Kaba Gandhi. He was the favourite child of the family and was called ‘Moniya’ by his fond parents and their friends. Moniya adored his mother. He loved his father too, but he was a little afraid of him.
As a child, Moniya seldom liked to stay at home. He would go home for his meals and then run away again to play outside. If one of his brothers teased him or playfully pulled his ears he would run home to complain to his mother. ‘Why didn’t you hit him? She would ask.

“The purpose of this book is to tell in simple language how our great inventions came into being, to depict the life-struggles of the men who made them, and, in the telling of the story, to explain the working of the inventions in a way the boy can understand. The stories which are here woven together present the great epochs in the history of physics, and are intended to give to the young reader a connected view of the way in which our great inventions have arisen out of scientific discovery on the one hand, and conditions which we may call social and economic on the other hand. If the book shall appeal to young readers, and lead them to an appreciation of the meaning of a great invention, the author will feel that his purpose has been achieved.” -Introduction

The Story of Mankind” follows the history of western civilization from prehistoric times to the early 20th century. Van Loon both wrote and illustrated this book, which he wrote for his grandchildren, in such a way that children would be learning in an entertaining way. From the development of writing and art to the formation of religion and politics, Van Loon emphasizes the people and events central to the changes and achievements of human history. A remarkable, accurate, and enduring work of children’s literature, “The Story of Mankind” is an engaging narration of the procession of events in world history.

The Story of My Life’ is a novel by Clarence Darrow, which is narrated in first-person from the point of view of Alison Poole, “an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious 20-year-old.” Alison is originally from Virginia and lives in Manhattan, where she is involved in several sexual relationships and is aspiring to become an actress.

My great ambition as a boy was to be a sailor; the idea of becoming one occupied my thoughts by day and influenced my dreams by night. I delighted in reading naval histories and exploits and tales of the sea, and I looked upon Rodney, Howe, Nelson, and Saint Vincent, as well as Duncan, Collingwood, Exmouth, and Sir Sidney Smith, as far greater men, and more worthy of admiration, than all the heroes of antiquity put together—an opinion which I hold even to the present day, and which, I hope, all my readers will maintain with me.

The “story” of Perugia is, like the story of nearly all Italian towns, as full and varied as the story of a nation. Every side-light of history is cast upon it, and nearly every phase of man’s policy and art reflected on its monuments. To do justice to so grand a pageant in a narrow space of time and binding was, we may fairly plead, no easy task; and now that the work is done, and the proofs returned to the printer, we are left with an inevitable regret; for it has been impossible for us to retain in shortened sentences and cramped description the charm of all the tales and chronicles which we ourselves found necessary reading for a full knowledge of so wide a subject.

In these days of Public Schools and extended facilities for popular education it would be difficult to find many people unaccustomed to the use of steel pens, but although the manufacture of this article by presses and tools must have been introduced during the first quarter of the present century, the inquirer after knowledge would scarcely find a dozen persons who could give any definite information as to when, where, and by whom this invention was made. Less than two decades ago there were three men living who could have answered this question, but two of them passed away without making any sign, and the third—Sir Josiah Mason—has left on record that his friend and patron—Mr. Samuel Harrison—about the year 1780, made a steel pen for Dr. Priestley.

On general grounds I deprecate prefaces. I have always thought that if an author cannot make friends with the reader, and explain his objects, in two or three hundred pages, he is not likely to do so in fifty lines. And yet the temptation of speaking a few words behind the scenes, as it were, is so strong that few writers are able to resist it. I shall not try.

In this little book, author has endeavoured to maintain the simplicity which is the ideal of this series. Author persuaded that the attempt to make the matter of psychology more elementary than is here done, would only result in making it untrue and so in defeating its own object.

I HAVE endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.’ -Preface by Charles Dickens

The boy or girl who reads to-day may know about the real Lincoln, than his own children knew. The greatest President’s son, Robert Lincoln, discussing a certain incident in their life in the White House, remarked to the writer, with a smile full of meaning; ” I believe you know more about our family matters that I do!”

THERE was once a Child who lived in a little hut, and in the hut there was nothing but a little bed and a looking-glass which hung in a dark corner. Now the Child cared nothing at all about the looking-glass; but as soon as the first sunbeam glided softly through the casement and kissed his sweet eyelids, and the finch and the linnet waked him merrily with their morning songs, he arose, and went out into the green meadow. And he begged flour of the primrose, and sugar of the violet, and butter of the butter-cup; he shook dew-drops from the cowslip into the cup of a harebell; spread out a large lime leaf, set his little breakfast upon it, and feasted daintily. Sometimes he invited a humming bee, oftener a gay butterfly, to partake his feast; but his favourite guest was the blue dragonfly. The bee murmured a great deal, in a solemn tone, about his riches: but the Child thought that if he were a bee heaps of treasure would not make him gay and happy; and that it must be much more delightful and glorious to float about in the free and fresh breezes of spring, and to hum joyously in the web of the sunbeams, than, with heavy feet and heavy heart, to stow the silver wax and the golden honey into cells.

Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. “I incline to Cain’s heresy,” he used to say quaintly: “I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.” In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of downgoing men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour.

The time has come to say good-bye; and good-byes are always so sad that it is much better when we do not know that we have got to say them. It is so long since Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood came out to greet you in the ‘Blue Fairy Book,’ that some of you who wore pigtails or sailor suits in those days have little boys and girls of your own to read the stories to now, and a few may even have little baby grandchildren.

The Straw is a three act play written by American playwright Eugene O’Neill in 1922. The play follows lead characters Eileen Carmody and Stephen Murray during their time at Hill Farm Sanatorium.

Of what materials is the earth composed, and in what manner are these materials arranged? These are the first inquiries with which Geology is occupied, a science which derives its name from the Greek ge, the earth, and logos, a discourse. Previously to experience we might have imagined that investigations of this kind would relate exclusively to the mineral kingdom, and to the various rocks, soils, and metals, which occur upon the surface of the earth, or at various depths beneath it. But, in pursuing such researches, we soon find ourselves led on to consider the successive changes which have taken place in the former state of the earth’s surface and interior, and the causes which have given rise to these changes; and, what is still more singular and unexpected, we soon become engaged in researches into the history of the animate creation, or of the various tribes of animals and plants which have, at different periods of the past, inhabited the globe. -an excerpt

It has long been a matter of surprize to those who are interested in the education of youth, that, among the numerous publications intended for their improvement, so few attempts have been made to facilitate the study of Astronomy.

Many excellent treatises have been written on this important and useful science; but if it be considered that they abound with technical terms, unintelligible to juvenile minds, it cannot be expected that they should derive any great advantage from the perusal of them.

The object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able, the grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all on social or political matters, and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been constantly growing stronger by the progress of reflection and the experience of life: That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.

The book is about the last voyage of a British crusing ship, the Chancellor, advised from the point of view of one of its passengers (in the shape of a diary). At the establishing of its voyage, the Chancellor carried 28 people, however via the end, solely eleven human beings remain.

Albertine disparue is the title of the sixth volume of Marcel Proust’s seven part novel, À la recherche du temps perdu. It is also known as La Fugitive and The Sweet Cheat Gone.

The Swiss Family Robinson is a novel by Johann David Wyss, first published in 1812, about a Swiss family of immigrants whose ship en route to Port Jackson, Australia, goes off course and is shipwrecked in the East Indies.

Where the great plain of Tarphet runs up, as the sea in estuaries, among the Cyresian mountains, there stood long since the city of Merimna well-nigh among the shadows of the crags. I have never seen a city in the world so beautiful as Merimna seemed to me when first I dreamed of it. It was a marvel of spires and figures of bronze, and marble fountains, and trophies of fabulous wars, and broad streets given over wholly to the Beautiful. Right through the centre of the city there went an avenue fifty strides in width, and along each side of it stood likenesses in bronze of the Kings of all the countries that the people of Merimna had ever known. At the end of that avenue was a colossal chariot with three bronze horses driven by the winged figure of Fame, and behind her in the chariot the huge form of Welleran, Merimna’s ancient hero, standing with extended sword. So urgent was the mien and attitude of Fame, and so swift the pose of the horses, that you had sworn that the chariot was instantly upon you, and that its dust already veiled the faces of the Kings. And in the city was a mighty hall wherein were stored the trophies of Merimna’s heroes. Sculptured it was and domed, the glory of the art of masons a long while dead, and on the summit of the dome the image of Rollory sat gazing across the Cyresian mountains towards the wide lands beyond, the lands that knew his sword. And beside Rollory, like an old nurse, the figure of Victory sat, hammering into a golden wreath of laurels for his head the crowns of fallen Kings.

The Symbolist Movement in Literature’ by Arthur Symons was a noted work that brought French Revolution to the attention of Anglo-American literary circles. Its first two editions were vital influences on W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot—a note that, for nothing else, would assure its historical place with the most important early Modernist criticism.

In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets—when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta—there lived a tailor in Gloucester.

He sat in the window of a little shop in Westgate Street, cross-legged on a table, from morning till dark.

All day long while the light lasted he sewed and snippeted, piecing out his satin and pompadour, and lutestring; stuffs had strange names, and were very expensive in the days of the Tailor of Gloucester.

Once upon a time there was a village shop. The name over the window was “Ginger and Pickles.”

It was a little small shop just the right size for Dolls—Lucinda and Jane Doll-cook always bought their groceries at Ginger and Pickles.

The counter inside was a convenient height for rabbits. Ginger and Pickles sold red spotty pocket-handkerchiefs at a penny three farthings.

They also sold sugar, and snuff and galoshes.

Her sister-in-law, Mrs. Rebeccah Puddle-duck, was perfectly willing to leave the hatching to some one else—”I have not the patience to sit on a nest for twenty-eight days; and no more have you, Jemima. You would let them go cold; you know you would!”

Johnny Town-mouse was born in a cupboard. Timmy Willie was born in a garden. Timmy Willie was a little country mouse who went to town by mistake in a hamper. The gardener sent vegetables to town once a week by carrier; he packed them in a big hamper.