Many happy returns of the day!

by Ellis Parker Butler

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.