The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-04-14
INCREASING ATTENTION
 TO FAMOUS BIRTHDAYS

such and such planets at that moment. Only a small minority of those believers know enough about the system" to trace out all these influences; but all the rest take note of the date. and at least think of it as of wonderful significance some how.
 In any case great peoples birthdays are an interesting study. It is certainly hard to derive any deduction as to their character from their birthdays or their birth months. We find poets, warriors, sages. craftsmen and misers inextricably mingled on the calendar apparently. There are curious concidences-such. for instance as the birth of Cornelius Van- derbilt and Jay Gould on the 27th of May 1794 and 1s36); but If we hasten to infer some quality about that date which tends to make millionaires we wonder why it did not make a millionaire, too, of Dante Alighieri, who was born on the same day. Dante, Vanderbilt. Julia Ward Howe, Jay Gould and Gen. Nathaniel Greene make a sufficiently incongruous showing for that ono day.
 
 markable circumstance that Robert Schu- mann, Hans von Buelow and Lowell Ma son were born on the Sth of January QS1o, 1890 and 1792) an influence favorable to the development of musical genius, we wonder why 1t did not make a musician of Wilkie Collins, who was born on the same day. The 17th of January might be accounted propitious for literary genius on account of the birth upon 1t of Calde- ron, Franklin and Alheri. But what an interloper that canny Yankee politician, Caleb Cushing, was in such companyl It is impossible to discover any astrological relevancy between Daniel Webster, Mon- tesquieu Charles Kean and Austin Dob son, who first saw the frosty light on various 1sths of January; and there is a distinguished irrelevancy between Ham nah More and Nell Gwynn. who came to the earth on the 2d of February.
 Here are three distinguished soldiers all born on the 9th of March-Jomini, Sir Charles Napier and Philip H. Sheridan. Perhaps the star-gazers could tell us why they came thus together. And while they are telling us. we should like to know
  beth Barrett Browning; one great artist. Michaelangelo Buonarotti, and one man who united the qualities of artist and man of letters in no eminent sense, George Du Maurier, came into life also on the 2d of February.
 John c. Calhoun and Grover Cleveland were born on the 18th of March. Doubt less they had some views in common; but a very different fortune presided over their destiny
 And now for day of charming incon- gruities the same day that saw the birth of Ovid, March 20, also witnessed the appearance in the world of Neal Dow, Henrik Ibsen and Charles w. Elliott But April was surely great day for let- ters; behold the advent upon 1t of George Herbert Washington Irving, Mary Car penter, Edward Everett Hale, John Phoenix and John Burroughs One won- ders what Leon Gambetta was doing dams cette galore. Among incongruities we shall perhaps, find nothing more start ling than the birth of Plato and Paul de Rock on the Fist of May, unless 1t were the appearance of Socrates and George III. on the 4th of June and George Wash ington and Arthur Schopenhauer on the 22d of February. Hawthorne, on his birthday, which was the 4th of July, has the company of Monsieur Pierre Loti; one wonders if he would like it, and also whether he finds Garibaldi and Carolus Duran, also born on our patriotic anni- versary, more congenial.
 The more, in fact we study the mat ter of great mems birthdays the moro liKely we are to be convinced that great ness Is a matter of inheritance and en- vironment and not of astrology, and that if we are underlings the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in our selves J. E.. C..