Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on this day in 1859. He died in 1930 after a very full life as a physician and writer, but oh, what a writer! He created one of the grandest characters in English fiction, the quintessential sleuth, chemist, violin player, boxer, and swordsman, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, London, and his friend, Dr. John Watson. They are characters so real, even today, that they have spawned numberless Holmes Societies around the world. Punch Yahoo! on the Internet and you will find the Home Pages of many of these societies. In Portland, Oregon, for instance, you will find an invitation to join the Ninth Annual Holmsian Games on Sept. 20-21, at the Red Lion Inn in downtown Portland, "an inspired collection of fun, mayhem, foolishness, scholarly activities, and Holmesian good humor and fun, held in the lovely City of Roses." That's from the Home Page <www.teleport.com/~gbridger/index.html>, which also reports on last year's debate. After Christine Ellis of Portland presented a determined rationale in favor of the proposition that Watson was really a woman , she was bested by Len Haffenden of Vancouver, whose arguments prevailed to sustain the generally-accepted position that it was John, not Joan, Watson, who stood by Holmes so faithfully at 221B Baker Street. There's a Web Site called Baker Street Connection <www.citsoft.com/holmes.html> that tells us "more than we really want to know" about Holmes and his creator, Conan Doyle. There's another site, created by Michael Sherman <mset@cmu.edu>, that has been celebrated by a number of leading authorities as one of the top 5% of all the Web sites in the world. Sherman provides, among other things, the complete text of 48 of the 60 Holmes stories. (The last dozen written after 1919 are still under the copyright.) He offers an episode guide for the Granada Television productions on Holmes, guides to other Web Sites showing us to various Holmes museums, Holmes memorabilia and pictures on the Web, FAQ lists on Holmes, and to an alt.fan.holmes news group.

MODEL: For the writers among you, members of FECHA, our advice is to see if you can create a character that is as sharply etched as Sherlock Holmes. You will make no less than $336 million on book and, naturally, subsidiary rights. ***

Persistent person. If you were born on May 22, you have the energy required to move mountains. You enjoy activities, hobbies and entertainment in which you can exercise your talents repetitively, improving as you go. You gauge your success not by the material wealth or number of friends you collect , but the amount of work you accomplish. You are a collector of things, facts, numbers, trivia, even friends, and you spend a lot of your time naming and categorizing these items. Ruled by the number 4 and the planet Uranus, you often arouse antagonism by taking the minority view.

Family feelings. The structure and good feelings of family life are important to you. If you decide to have a family, you will reap mountains of joy and wonder watching your little brood prosper and develop. If a family of your own is not in the cards, you will gladly take part in an extended family as an aunt, uncle, godparent or the like.

Giant leaps. You must learn to not bite off more than you can chew. May 22 people tend to be obsessive-compulsive and take on huge projects they could never finish. This makes them feel tall as a giant until they discover they can't accomplish the task. Then they feel about as lofty as a dung beetle.

Forgiving and forgetting. They are not your strong points. You tend to hold grudges a long time or color memories of past wrongs to shield yourself against the pain. This is a sort of buffer, for your emotions are rather unstable and you tend to explode in a childlike manner when disturbed even slightly.

Some advice: You must control your hysterical tendencies to evolve as a person. Take on big projects in small chunks and finish what's on your plate. Don't skip over the details; learn to maintain things so they don't come to a catastrophic breakdown.

Also born on this day: Susan Strasberg (actress) Marisol (painter, sculptor) Jean Tinguely (French dadaist artist) Marie Fish (oceanographer) Cyril Fagan (astrologer) Richard Wagner (German opera composer) Sir Laurence Olivier (British actor) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes creator) Mary Cassatt (painter) Harvey Milk (gay San Francisco councilman) T-bone Walker (blues singer, guitarist, pianist) Michael Sarazin (actor).