The Gad About Town

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
 
Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.
 
Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.—a section of Oscar Wilde’s poem, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”

Oscar Wilde was born on this date in 1854 in Dublin, Ireland.
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… [I]f you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President.—Grace Bedell, letter to Abraham Lincoln dated October 15, 1860

Grace Bedell, an 11-year-old girl from Westfield, New York, wrote a letter to Abraham Lincoln, candidate for U.S. President, on this date in 1860, in which she urged him to grow a beard. “You would look a great deal better for your face is so thin,” she wrote.

Years later, she recounted that she saw a photo of Lincoln and was struck by the deep lines around his mouth and his high forehead and thought there up a solution.

Her letter in full, as reproduced in AbrahamLincolnOnline.org:
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Christopher Robin was sitting outside his door, putting on his Big Boots. As soon as he saw the Big Boots, Pooh knew that an Adventure was going to happen, and he brushed the honey off his nose with the back of his paw, and spruced himself up as well as he could, so as to look Ready for Anything.
 
“Good morning, Christopher Robin,” he called out.
 
“Hallo, Pooh Bear. I can’t get this boot on.”
 
“That’s bad,” said Pooh.
 
“Do you think you could very kindly lean against me, ‘cos I keep pulling so hard that I fall over backwards.”
 
Pooh sat down, dug his feet into the ground, and pushed hard against Christopher Robin’s back, and Christopher Robin pushed hard against his, and pulled and pulled at his boot until he had got it on.
 
“And that’s that,” said Pooh. “What do we do next?”
 
“We are all going on an Expedition,” said Christopher Robin, as he got up and brushed himself. “Thank you, Pooh.”
 
“Going on an Expotition?” said Pooh eagerly. “I don’t think I’ve ever been on one of those. Where are we going to on this Expotition?”
 
“Expedition, silly old Bear. It’s got an ‘x’ in it.”
 
“Oh!” said Pooh. “I know.” But he didn’t really.
 
“We’re going to discover the North Pole.”
 
“Oh!” said Pooh again. “What is the North Pole?” he asked.
 
“It’s just a thing you discover,” said Christopher Robin carelessly, not being quite sure himself.
 
“Oh! I see,” said Pooh. “Are bears any good at discovering it?”
 
“Of course they are.”—A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh, “In Which Christopher Robin Leads an Expotition to the North Pole”

Winnie-the-Pooh, a collection of 10 short stories by A. A. Milne about a young boy, Christopher Robin, and his teddy bear friend, Winnie-the-Pooh (birth name: Edward Pooh), was published by Methuen & Co. in London 90 years ago today.
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