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.
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Many Happy Returns of the Day!
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MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY!
There is one thing every person has. He may not own a dog or anautomobile or a wooden leg, but he has a birthday of his own. Evenwomen have them; they had them before they got the vote.
In a country the size of this, with something like one hundred and tenmillion inhabitants and only three hundred and sixty-six days in thebiggest year now in use, three hundred thousand or more people havebirthdays every day. Figures like these astound the intelligence andmake reason totter on her throne. Just think! If each of the persons[Pg 4]having a birthday to-day received but one birthday card four inches inlength, and those cards were placed end to end, they would make a rowof birthday cards one hundred thousand feet or more than nineteen mileslong, and the cost, if figured at only ten cents each, would be thirtythousand dollars. I wonder why I never went into the birthday-cardbusiness!
My own birthday, the one I keep for my private use, comes on thefifth day of December, rain or shine, even when that day falls onSunday. I have had it since 1869, and it is getting thin in spots andis not as fresh and crisp as it was. It is beginning to look likea dollar bill that has been in circulation since Grant was [Pg 5] President; but even at that Iget 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. Fortwelve months you might wake me up any night and ask me how old I wasand I would say, ‘Eight, going on nine,’ and the moment I opened myeyes on December 5th I was ‘nine, going on ten,’ and the most importantjob I had was to look forward to the next birthday, when I would be‘ten, going on eleven.’
But I’ve