The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-02-14
Custom of Observance Not Popular
 as Heretofore.
Dealers in Cards Had Fine Business --verses Which Might Have Beea Mailed, But Which
 Were Not,
BY L. F. WOODRUFF.

'The Valentine vendors. had but q sorry business this year. We are glad of this: the system is contemptiply foolish, and there are few other sys- tems just as bad among us. We ~hope that our refined people will become sensible people, for as general tnlns those that are termed refined nave Ca great number of foolish notions. This editorial paragraph Is copied from a newspaper published in Febru- ary of 1s47. On it's first page in rather blurred print is a review of our Country in the Year 1S47," by Horace Greeley. On another page is an article telling of the conviction and lining or theatrical manager who caused re- swiftly on one foot, with the other ex- tended at right angles and in a hor- izontal position"
 This is the goodly year of 1906. MT. Greeley lives only in history and even the most orthodox churchman would sing for joy if women in modern the- atricaI companies confined themselves to whirling around swiftly on one foot with the other extended at right an- gIes. But the custom of observing St Valentines Day still lives and 1t would be more than false to say that the Valentine vendors did but sorry bus mess this year.
 Were the Valentine vendors of 1s47 to come back to life just now, and walk into a store disposing of valen- tines, see the throng of small boys and little girls crowding around the comic" counter and notice the ayidity with which the children disposed of the pen nies of their parents for the silly verses and gaudy pictures printed on cheap paper and then pass into more pretentious place and see handsome val AkQnnaAd nf at fwn thpaA dollars a throw. those ancient vendors would wish they had been born fifty years later.
 Today is St. valentines Day. sup posed to be the day set aside in each year for Dan Cupid to play his most potent pranks, but the day has devei- oped into an opportunity accepted most ly by small boys for playing pranlxs with peoples doorbells and sending each other foolish penny sheets. Of course the old custom-which dates back for centuries,--for gallants to mail mushy missives to their maids stiI exists but it does not flourish as in the good old days of yore.
 The day was originally celebrated in England. Scotland and different parts of the European continent. particularly Lorraine and Maine in France, by a peculiar and amusing custom. On the eve of St. Valentines Day, a number or young foik--maids and bachelors would assemble together, and inscribe upon little hiliets the names of an equal number of maids and bachelors of their acquaintance, throw the whole into 8 receptacle of some sort. and then draw them lotterywise--care, of course, being taken that each should draw one of the opposite sex. The person thus drawn became ones Valentine. Of course. besides having got a Valentine for ones self, one became. by the uni- versatility of the practice, some other persons Valentine. These imaginary engagements. as may readily be sup posed, often Ied to real ones; because necessary consequence was that for whole year a bachelor remained bound to the service of his Valentine.
 From this custom developed the GUS tom of today, but all of the romance and the healthiness of the day has passed and there remains in modern times only an opportunity for coarse fun and inane expressions of ealf-like adoration.
 But in Montgomery, the Valentine vendors are happy. And throughout the country there are men making great fortunes manufacturing both comic and the calf-like missives. There is a man in an Eastern city who has made an independent fortune carving out the poor dogerrel inscribed beneath