The Project Gutenberg eBook of Many happy returns of the day!

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Many happy returns of the day!

Author: Ellis Parker Butler

Release date: June 3, 2023 [eBook #70902]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70902

Credits: Charlene Taylor, Jwala Kumar Sista and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY! ***

Transcriber’s Notes

1. New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

2. Typographical errors and hyphenation inconsistencies were silently corrected.

Many Happy Returns of the Day!

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

OF THE DAY!

By

ELLIS PARKER BUTLER

Author of “How it Feels to be Fifty,”

“Goat-Feathers,” “Ghosts what Ain’t,” etc.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge.

COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY ELLIS PARKER BUTLER

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

Many Happy Returns of the Day!

MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY!

There is one thing every person has. He may not own a dog or an automobile or a wooden leg, but he has a birthday of his own. Even women have them; they had them before they got the vote.

In a country the size of this, with something like one hundred and ten million inhabitants and only three hundred and sixty-six days in the biggest year now in use, three hundred thousand or more people have birthdays every day. Figures like these astound the intelligence and make reason totter on her throne. Just think! If each of the persons having a birthday to-day received but one birthday card four inches in length, and those cards were placed end to end, they would make a row of birthday cards one hundred thousand feet or more than nineteen miles long, and the cost, if figured at only ten cents each, would be thirty thousand dollars. I wonder why I never went into the birthday-card business!

My own birthday, the one I keep for my private use, comes on the fifth day of December, rain or shine, even when that day falls on Sunday. I have had it since 1869, and it is getting thin in spots and is not as fresh and crisp as it was. It is beginning to look like a dollar bill that has been in circulation since Grant was President; but even at that I get a certain amount of cheer out of it, as I shall explain later.

There was a time when my birthday was a mighty important event. For twelve months you might wake me up any night and ask me how old I was and I would say, ‘Eight, going on nine,’ and the moment I opened my eyes on December 5th I was ‘nine, going on ten,’ and the most important job I had was to look forward to the next birthday, when I would be ‘ten, going on eleven.’

But I’ve got over that. I’m not so crazy about birthdays any more. I don’t worry about whether or not they are going to come; I have a feeling that they are going to come along right regularly, whether I fret about them or not. And I don’t spend much time saying to myself, ‘I’m ninety-nine, going on a hundred,’ or whatever my age may be. I’m not interested. If anybody asks me, suddenly, how old I am, I have to subtract 1869 from 1925, and I’m likely to miss the correct answer by ten or twenty years. And that does not bother me, either.

December has always been a favorite birthday month in our family. My birthday arrives a few days after I have the last tulip bulbs in the ground, and my father’s is six days later, and my boy’s dog’s birthday is two days after that. The dog does not get many letters concerning his birthday, but I do—I get quite a number, and a good many are from people I don’t know at all. That is because some newspaper syndicate has included me in a daily feature entitled something like ‘Who Was Born To-day.’ I suppose the people who read those birthday dates think it is not much use writing to Adam or Moses or the man who invented suspenders, they being too considerably elsewhere, so they write to me.

So, every year, I get quite a few birthday letters from these unknown friends. And I like to get them, too. But I do think there is just a little too much suggestion in some of them of an idea that means, ‘Well, you poor old fish, here’s another of your years gone—you’ll be through before long!’

I don’t like that; I don’t vote that ticket. Being a good-natured man—except in the bosom of my family—I have to write a line or two to those people and say, ‘Thanks for your kind birthday wishes, you have touched my heart’; but what I would like to write is, ‘Go on! You’ll probably be dead twenty years before I am; go weep on your own shoulder.’ I can’t concede that I’m crazy to be the sort of man who looks up from his tulip-planting and gazes at his neighbor and draws a long face and sighs, and says, ‘Yes, yes! I’m a year older to-day—before long they’ll put me in the box with the silver handles and plant me a little deeper than the tulip bulbs.’

When I was a boy out in Iowa, I had a friend who had a grandaunt named Petunia Mullins, and every time her birthday came around he coaxed me to go with him when he took a present to her. He hated to go alone, and I did not blame him. He would climb the stairs to her flat and hesitate at the door and then tap on it reluctantly, and when she opened to him he would screw his face into a bright, sunny smile and hand her the nice hand-embroidered teapot or silver-plated handkerchief, and cry merrily, ‘Happy birthday, Aunt Petunia!’ And when she had taken the present and had looked for the tag to see how much it had cost, she would roll up her eyes and snuffle and say, ‘Yes, yes! it is the sad day; I won’t be with you much longer, William.’

Up the river from us a few miles another of the boys had an uncle. I’ll call him ‘Uncle Pethcod,’ because Pethcod is a name I don’t care much for, and I never cared much for this man. I rowed up there in a skiff with this Uncle Pethcod’s nephew on one of his birthdays. It was a beautiful day—a bright sunny day—and Sam handed his uncle a classy wall calendar all wrapped up in tissue paper and tied with a blue ribbon. The calendar was a lovely thing, with a Gibson girl on it in eight colors, and just as good as when Sam received it for Christmas, except that it was a little smudged in one place where Sam had rubbed out the ‘25 cts.’ and put ‘$1.50’ in place of it. It was a calendar any one should have been glad to own, and it should have given that uncle a thrill of happiness; but when he had pulled off its wrappings he looked at it sadly and shook his head. ‘Thank you, Samuel, thank you,’ he said. ‘I always loved calendars, but I don’t expect I’ll get full use out of this one. I shouldn’t wonder if I would be naught but a cold blue corpse laid underground before all the days on this calendar have passed.’

Somehow that seemed to cast an unnecessary gloom over an otherwise perfectly good occasion. And the worst of it was that the old man was wrong, entirely wrong, because it was a last year’s calendar and the days on it had already passed. He might as well have been cheerful about it.

Sometimes I think we make too much of this birthday business in this country, or go at it the wrong way, or something. We look on our birthdays as if our years were a pile of twenty-dollar bills and the birthday was the day we spent the last cent of one and broke the next into small change. I can’t see a birthday in that light at all; I don’t become a year older on my birthday; the longest birthday I ever live can’t make me more than twenty-four hours older than I was the day before, and that’s nothing to get excited about. Every day does that to me.

If you look at this thing properly, a birthday is no more important than any one of the million ticks of a clock as the hands proceed at a regular pace around the dial. When the hands point to twelve the clock strikes twelve—or, if it is like some clocks I’ve owned, it strikes eleven or twenty-two or sixteen—but that doesn’t mean an hour has jumped past at that moment. The clock doesn’t go over in a musty corner and sob, ‘Here’s another twelve hours gone—in a few more hours I’ll be junk!’ You bet it doesn’t! It knows better. Nothing has happened, except that another second has gone by in exactly the usual way. That’s nothing to make a man blue—or a woman either.

I know a man who is so pessimistic that if you make him a present of a brand-new silver dollar he will turn it over and over trying to see if he can’t discover that one side of that dollar is darker than the other side of it. A silver dollar, spang-new from the mint, has no dark side, but that doesn’t bother this fellow—if that dollar has no dark side he picks out one side and calls it the dark side, and that’s the only side of that dollar you can ever get him to look at.

A couple of years ago we had a long and cold and hard winter and there was a lot of snow. I was going downtown the first warm day that spring, and the snow had melted considerably, and I met this dark-side fellow at his gate. Where the snow had melted in his yard the grass was rich and green, and where the sun was strongest a dandelion had opened.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘there’s a dandelion! That looks good; that looks as if spring was here at last.’

The dark-side citizen looked at the dandelion and all the joy of living went out of him in an instant.

‘Yes, yes!’ he said. ‘That’s the way it goes; it will be winter again before we know it!’

That man would never in this world think of his birthday as a joyous celebration of the fact that he was lucky to be born. I never asked him, but I’ll bet he considers his birthdays nothing but advance warnings of his approaching death. And that’s a fine way to celebrate!

When I lived out in Iowa as a boy, I knew a charming old lady who gave herself a small birthday party every year. She always had a little dinner party on that day and invited a few of her dearest friends, and as my aunt was one of those friends and I was living with my aunt I was invited too. To me, dear Mrs. Van’s birthday parties were always a great event. I always looked forward to them eagerly and was glad she had been born, and one reason was that always, as we left after dinner, Mrs. Van gave each of us a little parcel of some sort, and in it was a birthday present.

I cannot now remember what most of the presents she gave me were; I only remember that one of them was a majolica saucer, shaped and colored like a pale green lettuce leaf, and it must have cost all of ten cents. I kept that saucer for years, and it was one of the things I was fondest of, just as a boy is always fond of a thing he has no use for and that is especially inappropriate for him.

That majolica saucer, presented to me on her birthday by that cultured elderly lady, probably said to me, ‘You see! Mrs. Van knows you are not a mere clodhopper; she knows you appreciate Art. Other folks may think you can’t appreciate anything but brown molasses taffy and dead cats and buckwheat cakes and useful things of that sort, but Mrs. Van knows you can treasure finer and better things, such as genuine majolica lettuce leaves.’

We can’t tell what effect such seemingly trivial things have on our lives. Possibly owning that majolica saucer stirred my young heart with a desire to have a home of my own that I could put majolica saucers in, thus leading me to want to have a wife, and twins, and other children, and gas bills, and be a respected citizen with taxes to pay. If it had not been for that majolica saucer I might have grown up with no thought of home. I might have rushed away in some fit of bitter anger at the woodpile, and have become a lone wolf and ended by being a Mexican bandit. I might have become an outcast, wearing a belt to keep my pants up, instead of wearing one because suspenders are not fashionable.

It has always seemed to me that Mrs. Van’s custom of giving presents on her birthday indicated that she considered her birthday a day on which to remember that it was good to have been born and to be alive. She was glad she had been born, and she wanted others to be glad, so she gave them presents. You would imagine, when you see how some people hate the coming of their birthdays, that there was some law of nature that declared that a man must inevitably die on the same day of the year as that on which he was born—that his birthday was also his deathday. If that were so, I might have some reason to hang up a bunch of crape and write for prices on coffins, plain and fancy, as my birthday approached.

If any of you want to think of your birthdays as a sort of subpœna to prepare to meet your doom, go ahead and do so—I don’t want to. I don’t even want to think of my birthday as a hint that another year is gone. I want my birthday celebrated by me as the one strictly personal festival I have on the calendar.

I’m willing to put on a clean shirt and go out and whoop it up on Washington’s Birthday, and I’m willing to join in with the rest of the boys and hurrah on Lincoln’s Birthday, but Washington and Lincoln are neither of them half as important to me as I am to myself, and when my birthday comes I want to get a little fun out of it, even if no one else does.

I don’t want to think of it as a mere memorandum that three hundred and sixty-five days have passed away during the last fifty-two weeks of time. I wouldn’t call that much of a birthday. If that was all I wanted a birthday for, I could use any other day just as well. I can look sober and say, ‘Well, another year is gone,’ on December 16th or June 10th or on the Fourth of July or October 3d or any other day. A ‘year’ ends every day of the year; a ‘year’ ends at every tick of the clock, doesn’t it?

One of the saddest cases on record is that of Emmett C. Stocks, late of Cebada, Iowa. Emmett was born at Cebada, and he had a sister Aurelia who was born in the same place; but when she was twenty-four she married a man named Finch and moved to Oregon. Emmett was three years younger than Aurelia—or so he supposed—and he lived with his Uncle Peter Stocks and worked in his notion store. He got five dollars per week at first and paid his Uncle Peter three dollars per week board, but when Emmett reached his twenty-first birthday his Uncle Peter did what he had always promised to do and raised Emmett’s pay to ten dollars per week.

Things went along this way for a few years and then Emmett’s Uncle Peter died and the notion store gave up its ghost, and Emmett went to work in the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank in Cebada, and he was so well fitted to the banking business that in ten years he was president of the bank, owned nine tenths of the stock, and possessed thirty thousand dollars’ worth of mortgages on the outside.

A year after having been made president of the bank, Emmett married Ruth Filsom, whose father owned the Cebada Dairy, and in due time they had four fine children—two boys and two girls—and Emmett built a swell house on the lot cater-cornered from the Methodist Church.

The man who told me about Emmett said that all his life Emmett was the happiest and most contented man ever known in Cebada. He used to go around town humming a little tune and chewing a couple of cardamom seeds, picking up first and second mortgages that he found lying around loose, and people often spoke of him, and said that if ever there was a man who looked happy and was happy, Emmett Stocks was that man.

Things went on like this until Emmett was sixty-nine years old. On his sixty-ninth birthday he gave a party and invited all his friends, and his wife built a dandy birthday cake for the occasion with sixty-nine little red candles on it and ‘E. S.’ traced out in red peppermints on the icing.

Just before he cut the cake, Emmett made a little speech. He thanked those present for the gifts they had brought and said his finest feelings had been touched by the love and affection shown him, and that they would have to pardon him if his voice trembled, because when he thought how greatly blessed he had been he was close to tears. He had to stop for a moment right there to control himself; but he went on and said he had the dearest wife and the best children, and that the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank was in fine financial condition and paying thirty-two per cent annually and he had nothing to kick about and a lot to be glad for. Then he said he was now sixty-nine years old, but he did not feel it.

He said he knew that seventy years was the time allotted to man on this earth by the Psalmist, and he would not kick about that—he had had sixty-nine perfect years; and if the Psalmist’s rule came true in his case he would still have one glorious year ahead of him, and he would be satisfied and happy and content. He said he knew he would live until he was seventy, because he felt like a boy and his liver was in good condition and he had never had any stomach trouble to speak of.

He was going on to say that he here and now invited one and all to come to his birthday party a year from then, when Obed Riggs, the assistant postmaster of Cebada, pushed into the room. He was panting a little, because he had run all the way from the post-office. The evening mail had arrived and among it was a package for Emmett, all the way from Oregon, and Obed guessed rightly that it was a birthday present from Emmett’s sister Aurelia, and he had hurried to put it in Emmett’s hands.

When he saw Aurelia’s name and address in the corner of the package Emmett smiled a happy smile and asked permission to open the package before he went on with his speech because, he said, this was the crowning happiness of the occasion—a gift from his beloved sister Aurelia. So he took the knife with which he had been going to cut the cake, and cut the cord that bound the package.

‘It’s a book,’ he said. ‘Aurelia knows I like books.’

Then he removed the paper wrapper and looked at the book, and more tears filled his eyes, because he knew in an instant what the book was. It was the old Stocks Family Bible. He opened the book and the volume parted at the place between the Old and New Testaments where the closely written pages of ‘Family Records’ began with a page of ‘Births.’

Emmett ran his eyes down this page, and then he came to the record of his own birth, and the smile that had been on his face slowly faded out. In its place came a look of horror and despair. There could be no doubt about it, he had to believe his own eyes—he was not sixty-nine years old, he was seventy.

From that moment Emmett Stocks was a changed man. He closed the Bible and looked around the room with a woe-begone countenance, and after a moment he turned and went out and climbed the stairs to his bedroom, and undressed and got into bed. For six days he lay there speechless, with the tears streaming down his face, and on the seventh day he died.

Of course, there was all sorts of talk about this in Cebada. Some of the meaner folks, those who owed Emmett money, said the reason he sickened and died was because he remembered that his Uncle Peter had promised to give Emmett that five-dollar raise on Emmett’s twenty-first birthday and, because Emmett was mistaken in his birthday, the increased pay had not begun until Emmett was twenty-two, and that thus Emmett had lost five dollars a week for a solid fifty-two weeks, back in 1864, and that the thought had been too much for him. But that was not the real reason. The real reason was that Emmett Stocks had become so used to feeling as old as his birthdays told him he ought to feel, that the sudden shock of learning that he was a year older than he had figured simply killed him. Since I heard about Emmett Stocks, I’ve quit using my birthdays to tell time by. It’s not safe.

When I was in Paris I attended a birthday party there. It was strictly a family affair; but the young man who was celebrating was the son of the lady who owned the _pension_ where I was staying, and as I had paid part of my board bill that week I was considered one of the family. I can’t say the affair was very riotous. Members of the family from near and far sat around the edge of the room on stiff-backed chairs and nibbled small cakes and sipped thin wine, and conversed gently in a sedate manner. I did not do much conversation myself, the only French I knew at that time being ‘low show,’ which means ‘hot water,’ and somehow that did not seem to work into the conversation advantageously. No matter how good a man’s intentions are, or how willing he may be to make an affair a success, he is apt to be misunderstood if he breaks into the middle of a family talk, uttering ‘hot water’ in a loud voice.

In some ways that birthday party in Paris seemed more like a highly respectable funeral than we think birthday parties should seem; but one had only to look at the young man who was the leading gentleman in the affair to know it was not a funeral. He grinned more than the corpse usually does, and seemed to be a lot more uncomfortable, but he certainly enjoyed it all and was proud to be celebrated that way. As a usual thing, I try to take a prominent part in affairs and to be the life of the party, telling amusing jokes about Pat and Mike; but this time I merely sat around and looked intelligent until the affair was over, and then I came out strong. When every one present kissed the young man on both cheeks I refrained from kissing him and shook his hand instead, and this gave the party a sort of international aspect and made it a great success.

But what I like best about the French annual doings is that when a man celebrates his birthday there he calls it his ‘fête-day,’ which means a feast-day or festival-day. And usually it is not his birthday at all; it is the day in the calendar consecrated to the particular saint whose name he bears, if any. That certainly takes a lot of sting out of birthdays and makes them more joyous and care-free, just as if I had been named Independence Butler and had a right to celebrate myself on the Fourth of July. A ‘fête-day’ suggests something to celebrate with some sort of hurrah, a person’s own Christmas or Thanksgiving, as if everybody ought to be glad I was born. ‘Birthday’ is too apt to suggest nothing but that the clock has ticked again, that another coupon has been torn from my seventy-trip book, that another hole has been punched in my meal-ticket.

I’ll bet you never saw a magazine come out on its fiftieth anniversary with a black mourning border around the front cover and an editorial saying, ‘Alas! This magazine is fifty years old now, and just that much nearer death!’ No, sir! It prints the picture of a lovely young girl on the cover, and the editorial says, ‘Hurrah, boys! We’re fifty years old and going strong and we’ll probably live forever.’

The idea that every birthday shortens your life is all nonsense. The truth is that every birthday is a guarantee that you will live longer than you ever had any right to think you would. Every birthday you reach puts your probable deathday further into the future.

When I was twenty-one I went to a young doctor to be examined for life insurance purposes, and when he had pawed me all over and listened to my interior clock-work he drew a mighty long face.

‘I’ll pass you,’ he said, ‘but I should not do it. You have a heart. You may go along until you are about forty, and then your heart will begin to kick up and you won’t be able to do any more work, and a couple of years later you’ll be walking along the street some day, and you’ll stop short with an expression of surprise and immediately enter the pearly gates.’

Twenty years ago I was examined for insurance again. The doctor this time was no friend of mine, and I had never seen him before. He pawed over me and stuck new and improved appliances against me fore and aft—megaphones and dictaphones and so on. When he was through he asked me if I had had a good night’s rest the night before. I told him the truth. I said I had had a regular Hades of a time. I said my baby daughter was teething and I had walked the floor with her three quarters of the night and she yelling bloody murder. Then I asked him if he asked because there was anything serious the matter with me, and he said there was not. He said the heart action showed I had not rested well at night lately, but it was nothing important.

A few days ago I was examined again, and once more for life insurance, and again I did not know the doctor from Adam. In the twenty years that had passed, a whole new lot of testing appliances have been invented, and by the time the doctor had them all clamped on me I looked like a three hundred dollar car decorated with five hundred dollars’ worth of accessories. When the doctor had walked around me a couple of dozen times, studying the dials and reading the indexes, he gave his opinion—I was as sound as a nut: heart all right, blood pressure all right, lungs all right, everything all right. Not a thing the matter with me. So I’m younger than when I was twenty-one. When I was twenty-one I was sure to be dead at forty-four; now I’m fifty-five and if my great-grandchildren ever want to get rid of me they will probably have to use an axe on me sometime along about 1974.

The insurance companies, to whom such things mean success or failure, have been collecting statistics and compiling tables for many long years, and they base their business on those charts and tables. All those charts prove that, at least until you are ninety-five years old, you should celebrate every birthday with joy.

Suppose, for a moment, you were born in 1855. Dr. Louis I. Dublin, a New York insurance statistician, says that the first ‘Expectation of Life’ table of any value, in the United States, was compiled in Massachusetts in 1855. This set the expectation of life at forty years. In other words, the average baby born in 1855 had a right to expect to live to be forty. In 1910 the figure had increased to fifty-one years.

In 1920 it was over fifty-five years, and Dr. Dublin believed that campaigns to reduce the worst diseases, together with improved sanitary conditions and better standards of living, might add ten years to that. In 1924, in his report to Congress, Surgeon-General Cumming, of the Public Health Service, said fifty-six years was now the average span of life in America, and contrasted it with the sixteenth century when the average life was between eighteen and twenty years. So, you see, every time you celebrate your birthday you can also celebrate the improved sanitary conditions and new conquests of disease that mean you should live longer than you thought you would when you celebrated your birthday a year ago.

But this is not all. There is another reason why you should celebrate your birthday with gladness if continuing life is what interests you.

There is a table called ‘American Experience Table of (Insured) Mortality,’ that represents the facts and figures that have been dug out through many years. If you look at this table you’ll see that, when ten thousand boys reach the age of ten years, they have a right to look forward to an average future life of (about) forty-nine years. Suppose you are that boy and you are ten years old, you have a right to say, ‘Well, the chances are, taking the average, that I’ll live to be fifty-nine.’ So there’s no use worrying until you are fifty-eight, is there? But, if, when you reach the age of fifty-eight, you look at the table again you’ll see that the ‘average future life in years’ for a man aged fifty-eight is (about) fifteen years. So the average chance is that you are _not_ going to die at fifty-nine, after all; the average chance is that you are going to live to be seventy-three. So there is no need to take stock again until you are seventy-two, and when you are seventy-two and look at the table you find that the ‘average future life in years’ of a man seventy-two years old is (about) seven and one half years, and you have a fair right to expect to live to be seventy-nine and one half. And if you consult the table when you are seventy-nine you’ll see you have an average chance of living four and three fourths years longer, which will make you eighty-four years and three months old. And when you are eighty-four the table says you still have an average expectation of living three years longer. That ought to be almost long enough for anybody, I should think, but even when you reach the rather mature age of eighty-seven, there’s no need of celebrating your birthday with a grouch, because the table gives the eighty-seven-year-old boys an average of two and one sixth years more.

Every time you reach a new birthday you shove your average expectation of life further into the future. At nineteen you were due to be dead when you were fifty-nine, and at eighty-seven you are due to live two and one sixth years more!

That’s how Methuselah, the son of Enoch, did it—every time his birthday came around he invited the neighbors in and gave three hearty cheers. And he lived to be nine hundred and sixty-nine years old, and he wouldn’t have died then except that it got to be too much trouble to serve ice-cream and cake to all his great-great-great-grandchildren on his birthdays.

You can put this another way if you want to. The table would run something like this:

At 10 you have about 85 chances out of 10,000 of living to be 90.

At 30 you have about 99 chances out of 10,000 of living to be 90.

At 50 you have about 121 chances out of 10,000 of living to be 90.

At 70 you have about 214 chances out of 10,000 of living to be 90.

At 89 you have about 6041 chances out of 10,000 of living to be 90.

I don’t claim that the above figures are absolutely accurate, but they are accurate enough. They show that every time you have a birthday your chances of living to a fine old age get better instead of worse. I think that is a good reason for welcoming our birthdays with glee.

When I reached my fiftieth birthday I absolutely stopped worrying about dying before I was forty-five years old. And I stopped worrying about dying before I’m ninety, too. How can I tell? Maybe I’m the man Nature has picked out to beat Methuselah’s record and pile up one thousand years. The only thing about that that worries me is my hair; I can see now that my hair is never going to last that long. Unless I grow a second crop.

Last year when my boy’s dog had a birthday, we had a birthday cake for him, with red candles on it. I am willing to swear before any notary in the United States that he did not look at it sadly and sigh and say, ‘Yes, yes! Another year gone! A few more sad and doleful years and it will be all over with me and I’ll trouble you no more.’ No, sir! He pitched right in and ate the cake with the utmost joy. Then he ate the candles.

Perhaps it was because he is a fox terrier and has a naturally optimistic and scrappy disposition, but I doubt it. What I think is that when we wished him a happy birthday he did not have the slightest notion what we were talking about. Time and birthdays and calendars and clocks and minutes and such things don’t mean anything to him; he does not live by the year, he lives by the number of gray cats he can chase up trees. When you hand him a birthday cake, he doesn’t consider it a warning of approaching dissolution; he considers it joy-food and treats it as such.

How many people do you know who began mourning their birthdays years and years ago and are still kicking around? Dozens probably.

If birthdays mean anything at all, they mean that the good old clock is still ticking along the same as usual, and is likely to continue to do so. The world has never been improved much by the men who get up in meeting and read reports beginning, ‘I am sorry to report that the year just closed—’ The fellows who push things along are those who begin with ‘I am glad to announce that the year just beginning—’

When it comes to birthday presents, it is all right to accept with thanks what the other fellow gives you, whether it is a silver-plated ash-receiver or a green necktie; and it is all right, if you wish, to celebrate the day by handing out to your friends majolica saucers that look like lettuce leaves; but the best birthday gift possible is to hand yourself every birthday morning three hundred and sixty-five new and unused days, any one of which may turn out to be the best day you ever had in your life.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY! ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works provided that:

- • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

- • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

- • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.

- • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516, Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

Table of Contents

Many Happy Returns of the Day!

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE