Connecticut western news., 1910-02-10

United States, our prOgenitors fell in love in the old fashioned natural way and, being once in love, married as a matter of course, very few of them considering what they would live on in the married state. One reason for this, or cause, whichever one chooses to consider it, was that they fell in love and married young.
 The reason why I appreciate St Val entine's day is that it had a great deal to do with my present domestic happi- ness. A valentine began it, yalen- tine furnished means of keeping it up, and a valentine settled it.
 Fife Winston at seventeen was at the exact age her mother married married for love-married without any provision for the future. But Mrs. Winston married much later than hundred years ago, when getting liv- ing was easier and not so much was required. Consequently she didn't find married life as charming as 1t might have been had Effie's father had for tune or at least an income common surate with the requirements of an in- creasing family. Therefore, as might be expected, the lady did not propose that her sons should take wives until they could support them or that her daughters should marry men who were not prosperous.
 This was sensible, but when a sensi- ble idea is carried too far it ceases to be sensible. To come to the point, Mrs. Winston determined that her daughter Fife, in whom I came to be interested, should marry none other than a rich man. I wanted Fife, and hadn't a cent. Ergo, Mrs. Winston was a very stupid and a very obsti- nate woman. This was my boyhood reasoning and since I have grown to middle age I have not, in my case, seen any reason to change it. 1 con- fess, however, that my daughter Fife shall not marry pauper
 I made Efie's acquaintance at danc- ing school I asked her to dance with me twice ill one of our afternoon danc- ing school meetings. St. Valentines day came along soon afterWard, and she sent me a valentine. This was the beginning of it. Indeed, the pretty little missive was my first intimation that a member of the opposite sex saw in me something more than in the other boys of her acquaintance. didn't stop to consider that she might have sent one to a dozen other boys. If I had the heavenly flower of love might have been nipped in the bud. knew Fife had sent me the valentine, for, fearing I might be mistaken with regard to it, she scraWled her name on it. I assumed that the verses print ed on it had been laid down there by the printer for the express purpose Of letting me know that Fife loved me.
 Many a verse, many a letter, has been penned by a woman who intends to tell of the love she bears a man that have not in them a tithe of the pure sentiment that came to me in those lines, which had been slung off in thousands by a preSsman in dirty apron. I dreamed over my valentine, and I dreamed of Fife. She is now very necessary to me, but she is in- capable of inspiring me with any of that delicious feeling which welled up within me like waters fitted to be quaffed by angels. 1 carried it to school with me and at recess stole away from the other children to look at it. I had it with me in my room when I vent to bed and studied it till I knew every flower, every vine, every cupid It was the last thing thought of before going to sleep and the first after aWaking in the morning.
 Where was 1? 1 remember-I was abusing my future mother-in-law for being so stupid as to refuse me her daughters hand. This was long after I had received the valentine, for Fife was nineteen and 1 was twenty. Elf fife was as stupid, I thought, as her mother about the matter, for although she declared she would never marry any one but me, she demurred at be- coming my wife, I being in posses sion of an income of nothing a year. At any rate, she told me that, her i mother having forbidden her from re- ceiving or communicating with me, she would obey. Indeed, she was of her as my wife, and had no right to be dangling about her keeping de sirable suitors away.
 I accused her of heartlessness and other unattractive traits till I drew tears, then called myself brute, then kissed her goodby and then went away determined to put myself in position to earn enough to marry-on
 I worked like a'Trojan. I did not only my own work, but every one else's in the office where I was em- ployed. While other boys who had no such spur as I had thought only of getting a holiday now and then or of shirking what work they didn't fancy was thinking only of Fife and a tiny cottage. I worked all day and often at night. Indeed, I worked so hard that my employers noticed it and kept on raising my salary and advancing me till one day l was astonished at a proposition for me to manage the de- tail of the business at a salary of sc eco a year.
 While I was standing before the