Speaking of the art of writing a biography, Samuel Johnson said, “It is rarely well executed. They only who live with a man, can write his life with any genuine exactness and discrimination; and few people who have lived with a man know what to remark about him.”
Nevertheless, this author and publisher believes there are principles worth remembering in the lives of my grandfathers. Two biographies will suffice this author, however, because, after all, I had only two grandfathers.
Gaston Collins and the publisher are shown writing what would later become one of the appendices of Buy the Truth and Sell it Not during a 1965 cleanup of the family cemetery. The author and publisher is one of five grandchildren of Gaston Collins and one of the twenty-one grandchildren of Will Cook. He received his education from Tennessee Technological University, from traveling in the realms of gold*, from standing on the shoulders of giants** and from reading the Good Book.
*as in John Keats allusion to reading in On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer, MUCH have I travelled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been…
** as in the quote “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” spoken by (among others) Bernard of Chartres in the 12th century, and Isaac Newton in the 17th century.
