Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant-Duff, author and statesman, b. 1829. I don’t know what he wrote or much about him, but what a wonderful name! Could there really have been a baby given such an impossible name? The “sir” probably came later.

Wystan Hugh Auden, poet, b. 1907. (Wystan is a funny name, too. “Wystan, you come here right now!”) I read some of his poetry, and I liked this one best: As I Walked Out One Evening. He says that despite the lover’s song about love that endures forever,

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

I pray that my life will not vaguely leak away. The hope of heaven is a wonderful hope, but time here on earth is precious and short.