luse in them, and Beethoven, the
composer, was no exception to the rule. For art he lived, and the joys and
sorrows of domestic life he never knew. Yet the story goes that he was
once deeply in love and that his unconquerable shyness alone prevented him
from becoming a happy lover and husband.

Indeed, his aversion to society was abnormal. Melancholy and morose, he
shunned his fellows and found pleasure only in his music. Monarchs
showered compliments and gifts on him, but to the imaginative eye he
appears always solitary and abstracted. Seated in a reverie before his
piano, in his silent, gloomy chamber, he wrote passionate love music for
others, but he won no woman's love for himself.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (United States--1807-1892).

In America, also, there has been no lack of bachelors who have achieved
fame. The poet Whittier is, perhaps, the best known.

The son of a Quaker farmer, his boyhood was spent mainly upon the farm,
but he early displayed a talent for verse, and learned the art of
slipper-making to support himself while improving his education. In 1829
he was made editor of a Boston paper, and soon, aside from his poetry,
became a real force in the anti-slavery movement in Massachusetts.

Yet in all his long and active life as editor, author, legislator,
reformer, and poet, he had no thought--so far as we can tell--of marriage.

SAMUEL JONES TILDEN (United States--1814-1886).

There is perhaps no better example of the bachelor statesman in America
than Samuel J. Tilden.

The story goes that he was once deeply in love with a Southern lady, but
that fate, in some form, intervened. He never married, however, nor did he
allow disappointment to interfere with his career. He became governor of
New York, and later was nominated for president, being defeated by one
electoral vote (though he was the popular choice by a majority of two
hundred and fifty thousand). At his death he left more than five million
dollars, chiefly to philanthropic purposes, of which the Tilden Foundation
Fund of the New York Public Library received about one half.

Little Glimpses of the 19th Century

The Great Events in the History of the Last One Hundred Years, Assembled
so as to Present a Nutshell Record.

[_Continued from page 46_.]

SECOND DECADE.

1811

The French army under Massena was finally driven from Portugal by the
British under Wellington. France, the south and middle German states, and