Adventures in indigence, and other essays

by Laura Spencer Portor

IV

Out of the birthdays I have known, I have recorded but three—the three made memorable, not so much by material as by spiritual gifts, and by some vision of life itself vouchsafed me. It was as if, with a touch upon my hand, Life summoned me to note, even though in some unrealized way, when I was but a child of five, how inconsiderable may be these our little personal joys and expectations and vanities of song, even as were mine, in the face of the large solemnities and griefs and remembered joys with which, that day, our home was visited. And on that second birthday, it was as if Life bade me note how satisfying to the heart is the gift of lovely and willing service. Not mine the day at all; but I can remember, all woven in with the ravishing music of harps and violins, a sense of my almost thrilled delight in the service that others brought my sister, in whose honor we were glad, and a high joy in my own eager and devoted homage. Dimly seen in all this, though I could not have named it to you then, was a larger vision, no doubt, of this same truth translated into lovelier and more solemn meaning; as if in those lighted rooms, gay with their smilax and their laughter, Life had suddenly laid a touch on my shoulder, and with her finger on her lips had bade me note how sweet is the odor of spikenard, and how thrillingly beautiful are the broken pieces of alabaster.

And the third birthday? Perhaps it was then that Life put into my hand a better gift than any—that larger knowledge, which all the coming years were to corroborate, that to have special gifts and benefits for one's self which are not for others, let the glamour be what it may, is after all but froth and disappointment; and that only the blending of one's life with other lives can ever really satisfy the heart.

Since then I have seen birthdays of my own and others not a few, and have looked on at those of many a child. Witnessing these, I have sometimes been troubled to note how—materialists ourselves—we insist upon making materialists of our children also. For who has not beheld a little lad, triumphant as Jack Horner, in the midst of his birthday packages, or a little Midas, among his heaped-up Christmas toys, appropriating to himself, with our delighted consent, the Other Child's birthday also. With what shameful abundance of material gifts do we heap the little eager hands; but how few, how few, for the young and growing spirit!

Yet it is to be noted hopefully that our too personal celebrations are apt to fall away, as it were of themselves, in our later years; and doubtless with them many of our central egotisms, life correcting with a patient hand our dull and ofttimes willful behavior. I cannot be persuaded that it is solely a sensitiveness to the loss of youth that prompts us to waive or disregard those birthdays which fall upon the nether side of twenty. Our neglect of them is more often, I like to believe, in the order of a gentle disavowal of old egotisms, as life ripens and takes on in our regard an aspect larger and less personal; even as to a nation or a religion which progresses, egotism and special privilege become increasingly distasteful, and the idea of a chosen people more and more intolerable to the pure in heart, as the world matures.

Mature life, like the mature heart, cannot endure a sovereignty over its brethren, but longs for the old original levels; sheds its singleness and its superiorities. We become, God be thanked, less considerable under the moon as time advances; more of a piece with life; better blended with the days; a part of all dawns and sunsets—we who before had but one of each to our credit.

"I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of a day besides my dinner," says Lamb. "I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts—a grace before Milton—a grace before Shakespeare—a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading the 'Fairy Queen'?"

I own also to a disposition to celebrate many birthdays rather than one, and am inclined to be thankful on twenty other occasions in the course of the year besides that one which falls so personally for me—even if so negligible—on a certain February morning. I confess to a love of calendars that sometimes give me two or three great names to celebrate in a single day; nor am I ashamed to admit that the sun rises for me the statelier if it be upon an anniversary which commemorates Camoens or Michael Angelo. It has long been my habit, to celebrate quietly in my heart, when all the birds are singing, that day in April when, it is said,—uncertainly enough,—Shakespeare came to the earth; nor have I failed often to note that other day also, when, impartially in the same April weather, it is said, he—and Cervantes on the same day with him—departed from it.

And if such remembrances as these may seem still to tend toward egotism, yet I think that claim can hardly be proved valid. For these,—celebrate them as personally as we may,—these are not men of one season but of all time, blended with all days, impartially a part of all weathers, and of the very fibre and lives of most of us; and, even though we should forget them, yet memorably forgotten in those unforgettable companionships that they have bestowed upon us. These are our stars and moons, differing in glory one from another, with which, in the midst of our mortality, we answer, not ignobly, the shining challenge of the stars; these are they innumerable whose beauties and nobilities, coupled with our own inconsiderable lives, lend at last some glory to our days so frail, so ephemeral.

As a child, I used to love to count the stars, beginning with the very first one that pricked its way through the twilit blue, and by a pretty conceit always called that first one my own, and put a most personal wish upon it. For a long time it always stood single in the heavens, and then another here or there, and there, and there, appeared, which I counted with delight. But always the moment came when the count was irretrievably lost; when stars bloomed, not by ones and twos, but by myriads, no more to be counted than the unnumbered sands of the sea; and over me was stretched the jeweled beauty of the infinite heavens, just breathing with the breathing of the night; and I, looking up glorified into that beauty, a little inconsiderable child, standing beside the soft dark shadow of the cypresses.