Aur Onned Meren Bilbo and Frodo!

The celebration was wonderful! We had a wonderfully huge birthday cake and many delicious dishes to go with it. Quite naturally, Bilbo recited his speech, which I have copied down here in my book.



My dear people,
My dear Bagginses and Boffins, and my dear Tooks and Brandybucks, and Grubbs, and Chubbs, and Burowses, and Hornblowers, and Blogers, Bracegirdles, Goodbodies, Brockhouses and Proudfoots! Also my good Sackville-Bagginses that I welcome back at last to Bag End. Today is my one hundred and eleventh birthday: I am eleventy-one today! I hope you are all enjoying yourselves as much as I am.
I shall not keep you for long. I have called you all together for a Purpose. Indeed, for Three Purposes! First of all, to tell you that I am immensely fond of you all, and that eleventy-one years is too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits. I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve!
Secondly, to celebrate my birthday. I should say: OUR birthday. For it is, of course, also the birthday of my heir and nephew, Frodo! He comes of age and into his inheritence today. Together we score one hundred and fourty-four. Your numbers were chosen to fit this remarkable total: One Gross, if I may use the expression.
It is also, if I may be allowed to refer to ancient history, the anniversary of my arrival by barrel at Esgaroth on the Long Lake; though the fact that it was my birthday slipped my memory on that occasion. I was only fifty-one then, and birthdays did not seem so important. The banquet was very splendid, however, though I had a bad cold at the time, I remember, and could only say "thag you very buch". I now repeat it more correctly" Thank you very much for coming to my little party".
Thirdly and finally, I wish to make an ANNOUNCEMENT. I regret to announce that - though, as I said, eleventy-one years is far too short a time to spend among you - this is the END. I am going. I am leaving NOW. GOOD-BYE!

And would you know it, Bilbo actually disappeared! He showed up later on, but he wouldn't breathe a word as to how he did it. Gandalf doesn't look a bit concerned by the whole matter, so I suspect he was in on it. Ah well, I shall get it out of one or the both of them someday.