Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1881-02-08

SAOW Out VI VAO CuSVOlA WA1CA kdVO AZ q
real social value and grace. These have
long since faded out of it, and within
the memory of persons still living
"Valentine's gifts" which in the days
of Shakespeare were posies and poems,
and in those of Pepys, gems and gold,
have degenerated into doggerel and rub
Dish. Chaucer and Lydgate allude to
the feast, and Charles, Duke of Orleans,
the princely poet, who was captured by
Henry V. at Aginc0urt, is of record as
one of the earliest writers of valentines.
Drayton introduces the legend that the
birds pair on that day, in his pretty
| verses
Muse, bid the morn awake;
| Sad Winter now declines,
| Each bird doth choose a mate
| This days st. Valentines.
For that good bishops sake
Get up and let us see
| What beauty 1t shall be
That fortune us assigns
and Dome, in his epithalamium on the
marriage of the Princess Elizabeth to
Frederick, the Rhenish Count Palatine,
in 1914, begins
| Hail Bishop Valentine, whose day this is;
All the air is thy diocese,
| And all the chirping choristers
| And other birds are thy parishioners.
Never was st. Valentine held in such
honor as under the Merry Monarch in
England. Married people as we'll as
bachelors and maidens were liable to be
| chosen as valentines, and as the chooser
was entitled to present, the choice Of
ten enough fell upon householders of
substance. Mr.. Pepys records, this day
212 years ago, that little will Mer-
Ger came up to his wife's bedside to be
her valentine, "and brought her name
written upon blue paper in gold letters,
done by himself, very pretty, and we
were both we'll pleased with it. But I
am also this year my wife's valentine,
and it will cost me 95," he observes
However, he adds philosophicaIly
enough, "that I must have laid out if
we had not been Valentines" Mr.. Pc
pys himself drew Mrs. Pierce's little
girl, fact which rejoiced his thrifty
soul, 'it easing me of something more
than must have given to Others" 1t
was costly distinction to be reigning
beauty's valentine. The same chroni-
cler records that the beautiful Stuart,
afterwards Duchess of Richmond, re-
ceived from the Duke of York on one
occasion an $500 jewel, and from the
Lord Vaudeville of that time on anoth-
er $500 ring, gifts of this value being
sort of ransom from the obligations of
valentinage. To-day in some parts Of
Spain much jealousy and homicide are
avoideded by the practice of drawing
valentines, the "pair" being good for q
year, during which time it is obligatory
upon the swain to act as his bellies es-
cort on all social occasions, after the
manner more or less of Canadian muf-
findom. In February. 1868, Mr.. Pepys,
being again his wife's valentine, pre-
scented her with turquoise, which he
calls a Turkey stone," set with dia,
monds. Nilsson tells how in England
and Scotland the lottery of love was
drawn, the valentines giving balls and
treats to their mistresses and wearing
their biIlets several days upon their
bosoms or sleeves, "a little sport" he
says, (which often ends in love" Gays
verses recall the popular belief that the
first unmarried person of the other sex
whom one met on st. Valentines morn
lug in walking abroad was destined to
become the encounterer's wife or hus-
band, and in the Conaoisseur, published
in 1854 6, a pert young man tells how she
pinned four bay-leaves to the corners of
her pillow and one in the middle, so as
to dream-like the heroine of 1.-THE Eve
of Saint .Agnes"-of her future lord,
whom she should infallibly spouse ere
the year was out. Adapting to another
day Halloween custom, she also de-
voured on retiring hardboiled egg,
shell and all, the yelk having been re-
moved and the cavity filled with salt.
After such rejection she might have
dreamed herself an Andromeda captured
from her Perseus by the Cape Cod sea-
serpent. So late as few years ago the
sentimental valentine still competed
even in this country with the penny
lampoon for popular favor, one for from
Is cents up to $5-or on occasion to $50
the signing swain might obtain tes
timonial in lace and embossed paper,
with hearts, cupids, hymeneal affairs,
flowers and all complete. Perhaps the
growing popularity of Easter with its
eggs, out of which with the help of the
jeweler and the confectioner so many
pretty things may be Matched, has had
to do with the final decline
and fall of Valentines Day.
FORCIBLE REIMBURSEMENT DEAD
After quoting some passages of the re-
cent decision of the U. s. Supreme
Court, abiding to the Funding act of
1871, the Charlottesville Chronicle says
eff they do not recognize the act of
1871 as contract, the obligation of
which cannot be impaired without a
violation of the Constitution of the Uni
ed States, then we do not understand
he meaning of plain English. F0rcibIe
ae-adjustment is dead as a hammer,
old as q wedge and worthless as Jug
Without bottom. Bring in another
lorse."
The barn and stable of Corbin M.
Reynolds Esq, containing a large
mount of corn shucks &C., and six
orses were destroyed by fire on Tues
ay night. Loss about $40, OOO.-Buch-
nan Democrat.