Indeed, if it were not for this birthday,
I really think she would have forgotten to go at all; but birthdays are
great and solemn festivals with us, never allowed to slip by unnoticed,
and always celebrated in the presence of a sympathetic crowd of relations
(gathered from far and near to tell you how well you are wearing,
and that nobody would ever dream, and that really it is wonderful),
who stand round a sort of sacrificial altar, on which your years
are offered up as a burnt-offering to the gods in the shape of lighted
pink and white candles, stuck in a very large, flat, jammy cake.
The cake with its candles is the chief feature, and on the table round
it lie the gifts each person present is more or less bound to give.
As my birthday falls in the winter I get mittens as well as
blotting-books and photograph-frames, and if it were in the summer
I should get photograph-frames and blotting-books and no mittens;
but whatever the present may be, and by whomsoever given, it has to be
welcomed with the noisiest gratitude, and loudest exclamations of joy,
and such words as entzuckend, reizend, herrlich, wundervoll, and suss
repeated over and over again, until the unfortunate Geburtstagskind
feels indeed that another year has gone, and that she has grown older,
and wiser, and more tired of folly and of vain repetitions.
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