William Mickle, b.1735. Scots poet. I can identify with the theme of this poem, There’s Nae Luck about the House. Engineer Husband doesn’t have to travel too often, but when he is gone, there’s no luck about the house at all.

Rise, lass, and mak a clean fire side,
Put on the muckle pot,
Gie little Kate her button gown,
And Jock his Sunday coat;
And mak their shoon as black as slaes,
Their hose as white as snaw,
It’s a’ to please my ain gudeman,
For he’s been lang awa.
For there’s nae luck about the house,
There’s nae luck at a’,
There’s little pleasure in the house
When our gudeman’s awa.

Sir WIlliam Jones, b. 1746. Philoligist and student of Indian history.

The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have spring from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists: there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit, and the old Persian might be added to this family, if this were the place for discussing any question concerning the antiquities of Persia.

Kate Douglas Wiggin, b. 1856, author and educator. She wrote Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and The Birds’ Christmas Carol. Eldest Daughter always thought Rebecca compared rather unfavorably to L.M. Mongomery’s Anne of Green Gables, but I remember enjoying both books and both heroines.
Read Rebecca online.
Wiggin also wrote an autobiography, My Garden of Memories, and an adult novel, The Village Watchtower. I added both to The List last year, but I haven’t found copies of either one yet.

Edith Mary Pargeter, b. 1913. She wrote several fine historical fiction novels, including The Heaven Tree Trilogy about a thirteenth century family of British stonecarvers. Of course, Pargeter’s more famous series of books takes place a century before the Heaven Tree books, and she wrote them under a different name. If you’ve never read these and if you have a morbid taste for bones, you should go immediately to your nearest library and check one out. An excellent mystery.