Yes, the birthday is a happy day to the young. You rejoice that you are a year older and of added consequence and stature in the world of men, and a step nearer realizing the daydreams sweetly dreamed in school, when the magic of life filled you with wonder and awe. Birthday joy increases immensely until the period of ecstatic joy crowns all, when you score twenty-one years and write yourself down a man. You are no longer a flower in the bud worn in anybody’s buttonhole, but a well-developed plant on your own root growing in the open. When you get twice twenty-one birthday joy cloys on your palate, and you begin to resent the intrusion of the natal day as an unwelcome guest that you have seen too often. He reminds you that you are growing old and growing older. Your friends may crown the day with roses and toast you at the evening dinner in your best champagne let loose for the occasion, but the obvious remains, and your response to their unblushing flattery is not gushing as of yore. You tire of birthday greetings and birthday festivities; your vivacity flags; your digestion suffers. The thoughts that adorn the occasion are chiefly reminiscent, for the horizon of the future is narrowing down and leaves less space for Fancy in which to fly her kite. When I had covered my half-century a curious feeling like an electric shock chased along every fibre of my being on facing the cold, hard fact for the first time; I had grown old, and done it surreptitiously. Time glides smoothly, silently, swiftly, and startled as from a deep sleep, one marvels at the hot haste of the rolling years. You dread nearing the vortex of the great unknown to which we all inevitably steer, and finally sink beneath its swirling surface. The outlook is disturbing. Can’t you put down the brake and gentle the pace? Will no opiate drug Time into forgetfulness? You try the rejuvenating influences of Mrs. Allen’s Hair Restorer, but nothing happens. The bald spot on the crown of your head increases in baldness and shining splendour. The longer you watch it, the larger it grows. Time baffles your artful devices, smiles at your wild alarms, and drives from you the crimson days of youth, with their vigour and vivacity, leaving in your possession a feeling of comfortable lethargy which solidifies into pacific blissfulness. Insensibly a change has passed over you with the mounting years. How the change wrought you do not know. Where you crossed the frontier which in the twinkling of an eye ranked you amongst the elders you cannot say. Who can tell the moment when summer ends and autumn commences? Who can cut a clean cleavage between afternoon and evening hours?