Happy Birthday, Charles and Abe!

by tristero

To celebrate Darwin's bicentennial, here is one of my favorite passages from his autobiography
[O]ne day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one.

...I was introduced to entomology by my second cousin, W. Darwin Fox, a clever and most pleasant man, who was then at Christ's College, and with whom I became extremely intimate. Afterwards I became well acquainted, and went out collecting, with Albert Way of Trinity, who in after years became a well-known archæologist; also with H. Thompson of the same College, afterwards a leading agriculturist, chairman of a great railway, and Member of Parliament. It seems therefore that a taste for collecting beetles is some indication of future success in life!
Needless to say, this became a movement in The Origin, sung to sublime perfection by KITKA, the female Balkan vocal ensemble that portrays Darwin in my piece. (And yes, I'm trying to get a little more posted for you to hear!).

As for dear Lincoln, a passion of mine since I was a kid, let me suggest, especially if you don't know it, his pivotal Cooper Union Address (if you click the link, you'll get both the text and a reading by Sam Waterson).

Special note to the inevitable spoilsports: To say one loves Lincoln or Darwin is inevitably to be drawn into discussions of their various faults by those who conveniently forget their own far greater oens. "Well," As Joe E. Brown memorably said to Jack Lemmon, in a somewhat different context, "Nobody's perfect."

Enjoy!