|
Today's Featured Biography
Captain James Cook
 As an example of the self-made man without fortune or the prestige of a distinguished family to assist him, perhaps there is none better and more instructive than the career of Captain Cook, the great English navigator and discoverer. At his birth, in 1728, his father was a farm-laborer, and his mother belonged to the same grade of society. They lived in the north of England, and were people of excellent character. On account of his honesty, industry, and skill in farming, his father was promoted to the place of head servant on a farm some distance from where he had been working; but it does not appear that he ever made any further advancement. James learned to read and write, and was instructed in some of the simpler rules of arithmetic, which was the extent of his school learning, a very slender outfit for one of the distinction to which he attained in a lifetime of fifty years.
At the age of thirteen James was bound as an apprentice to a dry-goods dealer in a small way in a considerable fishing town. The business did not suit the youth at all, for he had before cherished the idea of going to sea, and his surroundings in a seaport doubtless increased his yearnings in that direction. A disagreement between the apprentice and his employer enabled him to procure his discharge, and he engaged his services to the Messrs. Walker, a couple of Quakers, who owned two vessels employed in the coal trade. He passed the greater portion of his term, and a considerable period after its...
...read more of the Biography of Captain James Cook
|
