Life
Swisshelm was born Jane Grey Cannon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, one of several children of Mary (Scott) and Thomas Cannon, both of Scots-Irish descent; her father was a merchant and real estate speculator.
In 1823, when Jane was eight years of age, both her sister Mary and her father died of consumption, leaving the family in straitened circumstances. Jane worked at manual labor, doing lace making and painting on velvet, and her mother colored leghorn and straw hats. At twelve she was sent to boarding school for several weeks, as there were no public schools at the time. When she returned home, she learned the doctor thought she was in the first stage of consumption. Her mother had already lost four of her children to illnesses. She moved with her children to Wilkinsburg, a village outside Pittsburgh, and started a store. After some more formal study, in 1830, Jane started teaching classes for village children. That year her family learned that her older brother William, much loved by all, had died of yellow fever in New Orleans, where he had gone for work.
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Famous quotes containing the word life:
“O life unlike to ours!
Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,
Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,
And each half lives a hundred different lives;
Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“My advice to people today is as follows: If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.”
—Timothy Leary (b. 1920)
“Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life ... can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)