t mittens as well as blotting-books and
photograph-frames, and if it were in the summer I should get
photograph-frames and blotting-books and no mittens; but whatever the
present may be, and by whomsoever given, it has to be welcomed with the
noisiest gratitude, and loudest exclamations of joy, and such words as
entzuckend, reizend, herrlich, wundervoll, and suss repeated over and
over again, until the unfortunate Geburtstagskind feels indeed that
another year has gone, and that she has grown older, and wiser, and more
tired of folly and of vain repetitions. A flag is hoisted, and all
the morning the rites are celebrated, the cake eaten, healths drunk,
speeches made, and hands nearly shaken off. The neighbouring parsons
drive up, and when nobody is looking their wives count the candles in
the cake; the active lady in the next Schlass spares time to send a pot
of flowers, and to look up my age in the Gotha Almanach; a deputation
comes from the farms headed by the chief inspector in white kid gloves
who invokes Heaven's blessings on the gracious lady's head; and the
babies are enchanted, and sit in a corner trying on all the mittens.
In the evening there is a dinner for the relations and the chief local
authorities, with more health-drinking and speechifying, and the next
morning, when I come downstairs thankful to have done with it, I
am confronted by the altar still in its place, cake crumbs and
candle-grease and all, because any hasty removal of it would imply a
most lamentable want of sentiment, deplorable in anybody, but scandalous
and disgusting in a tender female. All birthdays are observed in this
fashion, and not a few wise persons go for a short trip just about the
time theirs is due, and I think I shall imitate them next year; only
trips to the country or seaside in December are not usually pleasant,
and if I go to a town there are sure to be relations in it, and then
the cake will spring up mushroom-like from the teeming soil of their
affection.

I hope it has been made evident in these pages how superior Irais and
myself are to the ordinary weaknesses of mankind; if any further proof
were needed, it is furnished by the fact that we both, in defiance of
tradition, scorn this celebration of birthday rites. Years ago, when
first I knew her, and long before we were either of us married, I sent
her a little brass candlestick on her birthday; and when mine followed a
few months later, she sent me a note-book. No no