The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1902-02-14
4 n, the romance Of old time val
entines, the tragedy and COM
edy of them, the matches that
y were made and marred by

~ ID, the romance OF old time val
entines, the tragedy and COM
edy of them, the matches that
were made and marred by
them, the friendships that
were sundered, the hidden love that
was told, the hidden spite that was
gratified, in the days when the custom
of sending valentines was young and
meant something!
Today it is the middle aged, even the
old, those happy souls among them in
whom romance yet lives young and
tender and green, that realize now,
alas, only in remembrance, the pristine
glories of st. Valentines reign.
There is Miss Pine, born in 1S45, but
perhaps you don't know her. Miss Pine
was schoolteacher at the time of the
civil war. She is a schoolteacher still
and the salt of the earth. At the out
break of the war, back in 1861, she was
sixteen, with brilliant black eyes and
cheeks almost too round and red for
perfect beauty.
They have had plenty Of time to
grow white and thin and refined look
ing since then.
Young as she was Dora Pine was en-
gagged to Harry Willing, and Harry
Willing went out with that first call,
April, 1861, when striplings and beard
ed men enlisted, and every one of them
thought the war would be ended in
three months and he would be home
again. Harry Willing was transferred
to the gunboat service and worked his
way down outward with the Mississip-
pi fleet. Dora heard from him frequent
ly at first. In 1862 he sent her val
entine from near Memphis. 1t told her
with all the openness of a boy who is
not afraid his letters may be used
against him in breach of promise suit
that he loved her, that in this and all
the other worlds he was hers and hers
only.
That precious valentine reached
Dora in March, and it was the last
word for good or ill she ever had from
Harry Willing. He was never heard
Of again. He was never even reported
missing. Whether he was captured
and died in prison, whether he was
drowned off the gunboat in the dark
ness or whether any of half dozen
possible fates happened to the hand
some, daring youth no mortal knows
to this day. Inquiry the most persist
ent failed absolutely. Only Miss Pine
knows surely that he never was a
traitor or a coward, that he never was
false to her.
Forty years have gone since Valen-
tines day, '62, yet each 18th of Febru-
ary in the evening after her school
lessons are prepared Miss Pine shuts
out all the world, turns up the lamp
little brighter, unlocks a writing
desk and takes from it yellow, creas-
ed, ragged paper, the only valentine
she ever received in her life. Miss
Pine is thin and gray now. She wears
her hair in prim little old maid curls,
tucked back with comb above each
ear. Her nose is long and straight,
her hands are wrinkled, but her face
is tender and glorified as she spreads
that old valentine before her upon the
table and cons it DER and DER, though
CfCIy lClLCA AL ~ 40 pAIAtCo upOA ACA
brain cells. Her eyes bend over it an
hour, maybe, and all that time she
looks as though she were talking to
somebody unseen. And every st. Val
entine's night after poring over the
yellow paper Miss Pine dreams that
her hero is yet alive somewhere and
that he loves her and wooes her as he
did forty years ago. Perhaps he is,
perhaps he does.
d
Another civil war valentine story,
not so sad:
Packed among articles that were
precious to her in her girlhood, but are
trash now, of course, a plump, merry
eyed matron has piece of driftwood.
She does not take it out and nurse it
on st. Valentines night, for she has