Journalist and poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) was born in Johnstown Center, Wisconsin. Called the "Passion Poetess," the popular writer published nearly 40 volumes of verse, including her Collected Poems in 1921.

"Laugh and the world laughs with you," she wrote in her poem Solitude. "Cry and you cry alone."

Like contemporaries Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Walt Whitman, Wilcox created rhyming quatrains that "raised hope and made the blood sing." In 1882, her Poems of Passion, was initally rejected as "immoral." When published, the book sold about 60,000 copies in two years.

"With every deed you are sowing a seed, though the harvest you may not see," she believed and achieved wide popularity in her lifetime.

Wilcox celebrated kindness over selfishness, the positive over the negative. "There is no chance, no destiny, no fate that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul," she said. "I always expected wonderful things to happen to me."

Seek love born of friendship.