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.

What we now call school training, the pursuit of fixed studies at stated hours under the constant guidance of a teacher, I could scarcely be said to have enjoyed.

When about fifteen I once made a great scandal by taking out my knife in prayer meeting and assaulting a young man who, while I was kneeling down during the prayer, stood above me and squeezed my neck.

Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which men will never have to cope.

We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.

As years passed away I have formed the habit of looking back upon that former self as upon another person, the remembrance of whose emotions has been a solace in adversity and added zest to the enjoyment of prosperity.

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.

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

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.

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

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

Whenever a total eclipse of the sun was visible in an accessible region parties were sent out to observe it.

A suggestion had been made to me looking toward a professorship in some Western college, but after due consideration, I declined to consider the matter.

As the existence of a corps of professors of mathematics is peculiar to our navy, as well as an apparent, perhaps a real, anomaly, some account of it may be of interest.

Astronomers are greatly disappointed when, having traveled halfway around the world to see an eclipse, clouds prevent a sight of it; and yet a sense of relief accompanies the disappointment.

I finally reached the conclusion that mathematics was the study I was best fitted to follow, though I did not clearly see in what way I should turn the subject to account.

I had not yet gotten into the world of light. But I felt as one who, standing outside, could knock against the wall and hear an answering knock from within.

If my impressions are correct, our educational planing mill cuts down all the knots of genius, and reduces the best of the men who go through it to much the same standard.

In 1858 I received the degree of D. S. from the Lawrence Scientific School, and thereafter remained on the rolls of the university as a resident graduate.