BIOGRAPHY 



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BIOGRAPHY 



sight seem adapted only to older people, a little 

 study will almost always reveal much that will 

 interest a child. The "things that happen" 

 must of course be emphasized, especially child- 

 hood events, while all moralizing must be 

 omitted. There may be in such a biography 

 an apparent lack of proportion, but it is simply 

 an exaggeration of some points, not a distor- 

 tion. As a child grows older and gradually 

 widens his interests, he will learn other facts to 

 fit on to and fill out those he has already 

 learned; but he will not need to unlearn any- 

 thing of what he has remembered. 



Biography in the School. The teacher finds 

 many uses for biography besides the merely 

 intellectual one, for there is nothing so helpful 

 in character-building as well-selected, well-pre- 

 sented biographical material. This does not 

 mean that the admonition, "Do thou likewise," 

 is to be given every time a forceful act or an 

 attractive character is presented; in fact, it 

 means quite the opposite. If the factors that 

 made a man great or good are put impressively 

 before him, the child will have an instinctive 

 desire to imitate them. A knowledge of the 

 early hardships of Dickens, for instance, and 

 of his struggles to educate himself is almost 

 certain to waken in a child some appreciation 

 of his greater opportunities ; the story of Wolfe 

 or of Washington contains a never-dulled spur 

 toward achievement; the wonderful career of 

 Florence Nightingale is a striking lesson in the 

 benefits of preparation for life work. These 

 illustrations might be multiplied almost end- 

 lessly, but every teacher and parent will have 

 in mind heroes or heroines of his own whom 

 he can present sympathetically to the chil- 

 dren. 



The Biography Method of Studying History. 

 "History is but the essence of innumerable 

 biographies," wrote Carlyle, and the deeper a 

 student delves into history, the more thor- 

 oughly is he convinced that this is true. Some 

 men seem to gather unto themselves the entire 

 history of their times; the story of Rome in 

 its late republican days was the story of 

 Caesar; France for almost a generation had 

 almost no history save that of Napoleon; while 

 the trend of affairs in England during a mo- 

 mentous period is best understood through a 

 study of the life of Cromwell. In other eras no 

 one man stands out as clearly, and it is the 

 reaction of many less dominant figures upon 

 each other which works out the history of such 

 periods. 



To come to concrete examples, a student 



might possess himself very satisfactorily of the 

 history of the early national period in the 

 United States by studying the lives of Wash- 

 ington, John Adams, Hamilton and Jefferson. 

 If the history of Germany from 1860 to 1880, 

 for instance, be the topic, it may be approached 

 through the lives of Emperor William I, Bis- 

 marck and Napoleon III of France. To most 

 students this biographical method is very inter- 

 esting, for it introduces that personal touch 

 which makes history a living subject. 



How to Write a Brief Biography. No hard 

 and fast rules can be laid down for this, for 

 every person looks at the subject from a differ- 

 ent angle, but certain general directions can be 

 given which will be of use to school children 

 in writing such brief biographies as they may 

 be called upon to produce. First of all, an out- 

 line is most helpful. It need not be elaborate, 

 but it should contain every important point 

 which the writer intends to touch upon. The 

 natural method in writing a biography is to 

 proceed chronologically, and, simple as that 

 direction may seem, it is one that is frequently 

 overlooked by young writers. One apparent 

 exception should be made to this rule: the 

 great achievement of the man under consid- 

 eration should be briefly noted very near the 

 beginning of the biography, that the one who 

 reads may know why he is important enough to 

 deserve study. Later it may be dwelt upon 

 more at length. 



One rule cannot be too strongly insisted 

 upon a biography must not be a mere cata- 

 logue of dates. No one finds interesting a 

 story of a man's life which proceeds thus: 

 "He was born in 1847. In 1853 he started to 

 school and in 1865 to college. He graduated 

 in 1869 and two years later moved to Phila- 

 delphia." That is the mere skeleton, the 

 framework about which interesting events and 

 anecdotes are to be grouped. Above all, one 

 thing should be kept in mind, and that is the 

 crowning achievement; and every happening, 

 however trivial, which helped to shape the 

 man's character or ability toward that end 

 should be pointed out. In Nathaniel Haw- 

 thorne's life, for instance, the years spent in 

 the Maine woods were quiet, unproductive 

 years, but no one could understand Haw- 

 thorne's later life, his intense reserve and his 

 unsociable habits, without a knowledge of that 

 formative period. 



Some men's lives, from the point of view 

 of a biographer, do not end with their death. 

 Those classical biographies known as the Gos- 



