Most of us, if we live long enough, experience that
indifference. The birthday emotion vanishes with the toys that awaken it. I
remember when life was a journey from one birthday to another, the tedium
of which was only relieved by such agreeable incidents as Christmas,
Easter, and the school holidays. But for many years I have stumbled up
against my birthday, as it were, with a shock of surprise, have given it a
nod of recognition as one might greet an ancient acquaintance with whom one
has lost sympathy, and have passed on without a further thought about the
occasion.
But to-day it is different. One cannot pass over one's fiftieth birthday
without feeling that an event has happened. Fifty! Why, the Psalmist's
limit is only seventy. Fifty from seventy. An easy sum, but what an
impressive answer! Twenty years, and they the years of the sere, the yellow
leaf. Only twenty more times to hear the cuckoo calling over the valley and
see the dark beech woods bursting into tender green. I look back twenty
years, and it seems only a span.
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