The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1914-02-13
Paper Arrows

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If you will 20 into the city postoffice tomor-
row, you will probably see lines of people drop
ping little pasteboard packages into the mails
And you will guess within yourself that these are
valentines.
Lads and lassies have been doing this for two
thousand years. Before Rome had gone te
pieces it was a custom to have feast about this
season of the year, called the Festival of Luper-
Gala. The boys and girls gathered about the
bowl into which the names of each of the party
had been placed. The girl whose name the
young Roman was lucky enough to get would be
for the year his valentine.
This old Roman custom was taken over by the
Christian religion and named after one of its
saints-St. Valentine. The costom has lived IN
this way for two thousand years
Two thousand years. We would say two mil
lions of years if we knew man had lived that long
The valentine instinct is built into just as the
homing instinct is part of the pigeon. The
man who doesn't have something inside of him
that wants to send valentines is minus some
thing of the normal human apparatus.
Some solemn persons look down upon sending
valentines as very foolish thing. These unfor-
Inmates suffer from the disease of being grown
up. They have become guilty of the sin of being
old. Their blood has turned to vinegar.
We recall with pride that we ourselves have
sent valentines. They were friled with paper
lace, perforated with delicate designs, had beau
tful gided notices on the back and often cost
IS much as twenty cents.
The center of attraction in this bunch of
fluffiness was red paste-board heart.
The heart was pierced by paper arrow.
Those were wise valentines we sent them
Experience since has taught us that most of the
arrows which are shot into the human heart are
paper Emerson taught that most of the ills we
suffer from are imaginery. Some other philoso-
pher has said, 81 have suffered many ills most of
which never happened to me- These have dis
covered that msfortune's arrows are usually
paper.
Did you ever notice how things almost never
turn out as bad we had expected? You will
nurse the tooth-ache for a week; sit up nights
with it and get grouchy over it, all because you
can't get up nerve to go to the dentist But after
you have seated your reluctant self in his chair,
you discover to your amazement that the thing
wasn't half as bad as you expected.
Or maybe you had your appendix cut out.
You know how you lay the night through and
shivered with apprehension. You also remem-
her how you went to sleep on the operating table
and woke up in bed and didn't know what had
happened The surgeon shot you through with a
paper arrow.
The true philosopher in life will always find
that the ma ority Of shafts fired into his heart
are nothing more than paper. Washington Irving
tells story of an English business man who lost
everything in commercial failure 1t was with
great difficulty that he could persuade himself to
go home to his wife with the dreadful news. He
pictured her in his imagination fainting away
with terror as the prospect of their poverty
would be described to her. She met him at the
depot. With great difficulty he told the story
to her and concluded with a sob in his voice. "NIy
dear, have nothing left in the world,'' at which
lis wife threw her about his neck and ex-
claimed, "Why husband, you still have me- He
had been hit with a paper arrow.
Wise are the valentines. Wise are the paste
board hearts. Let's all send valentines tomorrow
with paper arrows in them.
And if someone sends you comic that wounds
your pride remember that its arrows are also