J.R.R. Tolkien

Chip the glasses and crack the plates! Blunt the knives and bend the forks! That's what Bilbo hates - Smash the bottles and burn the corks! Cut the cloth and tread on the fat! Pour the milk on the pantry floor! Leave the bones on the bedroom mat! Splash the wine on every door! Dump the crocks in a boiling bowl; Pound them up with a thumping pole; And when you've finished, if any are whole, Send them down the hall to roll! That's what Bilbo Baggins hates! So, carefully! carefully! with the plates!

Bilbo first finds the Ring, but knows not what he has stumbled into! Not far away was his island, of which Bilbo knew nothing, and there in his hiding-place he kept a few wretched oddments, and one very beautiful thing, very beautiful, very wonderful. He had a ring, a golden ring, a precious ring. "My birthday-present!" he whispered to himself, as he had often done in the endless dark days. "That's what he wants now, yes; we wants it!" He wanted it because it was a ring of power, and if you slipped that ring on your finger, you were invisible; only in the full sunlight could you be seen, and then only by your shadow, and that would be shaky and faint. "My birthday-present! It came to me on my birthday, my precious."

When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

Farewell we call to hearth and hall! Though wind may blow and rain may fall. We must away ere the break of day. Far over wood and mountain tall.

His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or storytelling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking, best, or a pleasant mixture of them all.