A Nosegay of Valentines

There never was a time for valentines like the Nineteenth Century, those proper old days when love peeped out through clouds of lace and sentiment and not an analyst had appeared to tell us why we felt that way. On these pages is a little remembrance of that perfumed era when a valentine was prepared with pain and opened with blushes.

As far as we know, the original St. Valentine himself never so much as rhymed Love and Dove. He was an early Christian priest who irritated the Romans by slurring such deities as Pan, Juno, Venus, etc., until, as his theological differences with the authorities multiplied, he was beheaded on or about February 14, A.D. 271. Presently a pink almond tree was observed to grow and blossom above his grave. In time, the honors paid him got confused with the old romantic customs of the pagan feast of the Lupercalia, honoring Pan, Juno, Venus, etc. This would have outraged the old Saint but has never seemed to bother lovers at all.