I’ll tell you how the Sun rose...
by Emily Dickinson

I’ll tell you how the Sun rose —
A Ribbon at a time —
The Steeples swam in Amethyst —
The news, like Squirrels, ran —
The Hills untied their Bonnets —
The Bobolinks — begun —
Then I said softly to myself —
“That must have been the Sun”!
But how he set — I know not —
There seemed a purple stile
That little Yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while —
Till when they reached the other side,
A Dominie in Gray —
Put gently up the evening Bars —
And led the flock away —


“I’ll tell you how the Sun rose...” by Emily Dickinson. Public Domain.  (buy now)

The Italian writer Italo Svevo (books by this author) was born on this day in Trieste, Italy (1861). He was devoted to literature but went into business, working as a bank clerk and writing a theater column and stories under a pseudonym on the side. When he published his first two books, A Life (1893) and As a Man Grows Older (1898), they were ignored by readers and critics alike.

Svevo needed to improve his English for business reasons and hired a tutor who turned out to be aspiring writer James Joyce, who had come to Italy to teach. Svevo shared his books with Joyce, who felt the Italian was a neglected genius. With Joyce's encouragement, Svevo wrote the book for which he is known, Confessions of Zeno (1923), a fictional memoir of a man undergoing psychoanalysis that today is considered one of the greatest Italian novels of the 20th century.

It's the birthday of novelist and short-story writer Eleanor Hodgman Porter (books by this author), born in Littleton, New Hampshire (1868). Beginning with her first novel, Cross Currents (1907), Porter was popular with readers, who loved her sentimental tales of orphaned heiresses and lost little girls. But her novel Pollyanna (1913), about a young girl who looks for the good in even the most dire hardships, eclipsed them all, spending two years on the best-sellers list and ultimately leading to a play, a movie, a calendar, and a daily almanac of reasons to be glad. Within a decade, the word "Pollyanna" entered the American lexicon, defined by Webster's Dictionary as "an excessively or blindly optimistic person" and one who is cheerful to a fault.

After the publication of a best-selling sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up (1915), Porter became somewhat defensive about the character she'd created. She said: "You know I have been made to suffer from the Pollyanna books. ... People have thought that Pollyanna chirped that she was 'glad' at everything. ... I have never believed that we ought to deny discomfort and pain and evil; I have merely thought that it is far better to 'greet the unknown with a cheer.'"

It's the birthday of French singer Édith Piaf, born Édith Giovanna Gassion in Paris (1915). Her mother was a café singer who abused drugs, and her father was a street performer — an acrobat and contortionist. As a young girl, she was sent to her grandmother's brothel, where she was raised by prostitutes. When she was a teenager, her father took her along with him to sing on street corners as part of his act. In 1935, she was discovered by a nightclub owner, Louis Leplée, who nicknamed her La Môme Piaf, or "the little sparrow" — she was not even 4' 10".

With the help of Leplée's publicity, Piaf made her first record within the year; but in 1936, Leplée was murdered, and the police held Piaf for questioning. She was let go, but her reputation was damaged. The lyricist Raymond Asso, her lover, helped rebuild her image — he taught her how to dress and act on stage, and he wrote her songs about the tough life of the working class.

Piaf went on to become an international star, with songs like "La vie en rose" and "Non, je ne regrette rien." She died at the age of 47, and 40,000 mourners joined her funeral procession in Paris.

It's the birthday of educator Maria Sanford, born in Saybrook, Connecticut (1836). She took all the money that had been set aside for her dowry and used it to pay for college tuition. She began teaching for a salary of $10 a month, but she went on to become one of the first female college professors in the country. Sanford was the first woman to deliver a commencement speech at a university, and she was a frequent public speaker at a time when it was considered inappropriate for women to speak in public. She was able to project her voice to the back of any room. On her 80th birthday, the University of Minnesota held an event to celebrate her long career, and someone recited a speech that described her as "vehement and gusty, leonine, hale, and lusty."

It was on this day in 1843 that Charles Dickens (books by this author) published A Christmas Carol, the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, whom Dickens described as “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire.” In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge learns the Christmas spirit of generosity from three ghosts who show him his past, his present, and his future.

Dickens’ previous novel, Martin Chuzzlewit (1842), was a flop, and he was strapped for cash. Martin Chuzzlewit was satirical and pessimistic, and Dickens thought he might be more successful if he wrote a heartwarming tale with a holiday theme. He started writing in late October and worked hard to get it done by Christmas.

At the time of the book’s publication, the celebration of Christmas was somewhat controversial. Puritans in England and America argued that Christmas was a holiday left over from the days when pagans celebrated the winter solstice. Many Christians felt that the extravagance of Christmas was an insult to Christ. But A Christmas Carol was a huge best-seller in both England and the United States, and it set the tone for Christmas as we know it today: a season of generosity, feasting, and merriment.

It was on this day in 1732 that Benjamin Franklin began publishing Poor Richard’s Almanack.

Poor Richard’s Almanac was a hodgepodge of things: It had information about the movements of the moon and stars, weather reports, historical tidbits, poems, and those adages that Franklin became famous for, like “Fish and visitors stink in three days” and “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead” and “A penny saved is twopence dear” (often misquoted as “A penny saved is a penny earned”). Some of the stuff was original and some was borrowed, drawing upon diverse sources like Native American folklore, common farmers’ superstitions, politicians’ speeches, and published authors’ writings.

Franklin published his wildly successful almanac for a quarter century, and its popularity increased by the year. At its height, the book sold 10,000 copies a year, making it a best-seller in colonial America. Books were expensive and hard to come by in the colonies, and Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac was the only book that many households owned besides the Bible. It made Franklin rich and famous.

Ben Franklin said, “God helps them that help themselves.”

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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