The Days Before 14+

📙 This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ... BIRTHDAYS AND OTHER EGOTISMS Charles Lamb, in his "Grace Before Meat," protests -- very endearingly, it seems to me -- against the custom of particular thankfulness for food. He suspects that it had its origin in the "hunter state of man, when dinners were precarious things, and a full meal was something more than a common blessing; when a bellyful was a windfall and looked like a special Providence. -- " It is not otherwise easy to be understood," he avers, "why the blessing of food -- the act of eating -- should have had a particular expression of thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct from that implied and silent gratitude with which we are expected to enter upon the enjoyment of the many other various gifts and good things of existence." I find myself like-minded and similarly pro testant as to birthdays. I cannot discover why the blessing of these should be hailed with any very particular delight, distinct from that implied joy with which we might be expected to welcome the many other various days of the year. It cannot be said that it was because I was abnormally shy throughout my childhood that I found birthdays embarrassing, for I had no more than the usual shyness of the average child. Moreover, my surroundings and tra...