One day a young friend of Robert Louis Stevenson's complained of being born on Christmas Day: receiving gifts but once a year, she often felt short-changed.

Some time later, Stevenson amended his will, bequeathing to the girl... his own birthday: "If, however," the document declared, "she fails to use this bequest properly, all rights shall pass to the President of the United States."

[Stevenson's grave in Samoa bears an inscription from Underwoods (1887):
"Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."]