3-021-369 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

St. Valentine's Day, 1868. Scene showing the delivery of '...those epistolary compliments which the custom of St. Valentine sends to the young and fair...It is only for the little children, of course, that these dainty missives are prepared and purchased. Boys and girls, from three to thirteen at least, may safely be trusted to play this little game with each other, under the discreet supervision of their elders. When the postman's knock, about the hour of eight a.m., is answered by the tidy housemaid opening the door, perhaps with some expectation of a packet addressed to herself, we may be sure that the small people of the family, Tommy and Fanny, and Flossy and Trot, are quite alive to the chances of some gifts to them from kind St. Valentine. See them...hastening down stairs into the entrance-hall, the two youngest pressing foremost, eager to receive their important correspondence...We fear they will find, as they grow older, that love-letters do not always keep their sweetness; and that many a heartache, many a severe mortification is to be set off against the rare gains of this sentimental commerce. Flirtation breeds a host of plagues. But we must not blame St. Valentine if men and women are sometimes foolish, fickle, vain, and insincere'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.