ON THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING BORN ON THE SEVENTEENTH OF JUNE
[To Alfred A. Knopf, Jr.]
By Carl Van Vechten
The disadvantages of being born on any day at all are sufficiently obvious, and every mortal must occasionally experience moments of envy for those vice elementals who exist in the eldritch fourth dimension outside the limits of Time and Space. But there are certain days on which it seems particularly unpleasant and discouraging to be born: Christ's birthday, for instance, whose sharers must face the fate of either receiving their Christmas presents on their birthday or else their birthday presents on Christmas, and the twenty-ninth of February, which by some is not regarded as a day at all. Any cold day in Winter is sufficiently cheerless in a land where Rum Punch, Mulled Claret, and Tom and Jerry are not to be readily procured; any hot day in Summer is scarcely suitable for celebration in a country which prohibits the sale of Amer Picon, Sloe Gin, and White Absinthe. No one really wants to be born in the Spring, which is a period of hope, or in the Autumn, which is a season of death and depression. I could, indeed, find many reasons for not being born on three hundred and sixty-four days. Fortunately there is one day in every year which is in every way worthy of being a birthday.
I say in every way, and then I remember that John Wesley was born on this day ... but that, after all, was probably an accident. Nor do I linger over the name of Charles Gounod,
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