"Happy birthday" indeed! Golden, precious, love-crowned birthday! Was ever such a book, so full of sweet messages and tender thoughts!
Ingrid knows how baby Tim must have labored to sew that red circle, how John Jacob toiled over that weaving-mat, and Elsa carefully folded the drove of little pigs. Everybody thought of her, and all the "chilluns" helped, and how dear is the tangible outcome of the thoughts and the helping!
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Far back in the childhood of the world, the long-haired savage," woaded, winter-clad in skins," went roaming for his food wherever he might find it. He dug roots from the ground, he searched for berries and fruits, he hid behind rocks to leap upon his living prey, yet often went hungry to his lair at night, if the root-crop were short, or the wild beast wary.
But if the day had been a fortunate one, if his own stomach were filled and his body sheltered, little cared he whether long-haired savage number two were hungry and cold. "Every one for himself," would he say, as he rolled himself in his skins, "and the cave-bear, or any other handy beast, take the hindmost." The simplicity of his mental state, his complete freedom from responsibility, assure us that his digestion of the raw flesh and the tough roots must have been perfection, and the sleep in those furred skins a dreamless one.
What impending visitation of a common enemy, what sudden descent of a fierce horde of strange, wild, long-forgotten creatures, first moved him to ally himself with barbarians number two and three for their mutual protection? And when long years of alliance in warfare, and mutual distrust at all other times, had slipped away, and when savages were turning into herdsmen and farmers and toolmakers, to what leader among men did a system of exchange of commodities for mutual convenience suggest itself?
One would like to have met that painted savage who first suggested combination in warfare, or that later politico-economist upon whom it faintly dawned that mutual help was possible in other directions save that of blood-shedding.
A union born of the exigencies of warfare would be strengthened later by the promptings of self-interest, and, lo! the experiment is no longer an experiment, and the fact is proven that men may fight and work together to their mutual profit and advancement.
'Tis a simple proposition, after all, that ten times one is ten; and the bees, the ants, the grosbeaks, and the beavers prove it so clearly that any one of us may read, though we pass by never so quickly. Yet all great truths appear in man's mind in very rudimentary form at first, and each successive generation furnishes more favorable soil for their growth and development.
First, men joined hands in offensive and defensive alliance; second, they found that, even when wars were over, still communication, intercourse, and exchange of goods were desirable; third, they discovered that no great enterprise which would better their condition would be possible without coöperation; and, fourth, they began to band themselves together here and there, not only for their own protection, for their own gain, but to watch over the weak, to succor the defenseless, and even to uphold some dear belief.