The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1917-02-10

And I've been told your pretty face
Is well known in each public place.
And If we wed you'll soon adorn
My brow with antlers from Cape Horn.
Thus prudence makes me to decline
Your company, my Valentine.
To this the reply was tart. not to say shrewish.
Indeed, our own more polite age would scarcely
care to hear so crude a letter from a feminine
Versit1er. These valentine books, from which most
of the lovelorn SWANS of the early eighteenth
century culled the lines that they wrote to their
loves. were published in collections bearing such
titles as "Cupid's Directory" "Carvalho's Polite
Valentine Writer and 1.-THE Frolicsome Valentine
Writer" the last a collection containing many
examples of early eighteenth-century humor of a
sort which almost reconcileS enc to the merry
professional jests of ones own era.
The Manufactured Valentine.
1t was a girl who started the business of manu-
featuring valentines for sale in the United States
a most enterprising girl named Esther Rowland.
who had just been graduated from Mount Holyoke
seminary and resided with her father in Worces-
ter, Mass. In 1S49 she received from England n
manufactured valentine, the first she had ever
seen. 1t interested her so much that she decided
to see whether she could make some of these val
entines and find a sale for them. With lace paper,
cut-out pictures and printed verses she manu-
featured several samples and gave them to her
brother to take out on the road TO show custom
es when he went on his trip for their fathers
stationery business. To her amazement, her broth
er returned with orders for $4,000 worth of VAL
entines. Miss Rowland, of course. was quite I'M
able to carry out the orders herself, but she called
her young woman friends to her assistance. and
they Immediately started what later developed into
a very large and prosperous valentine manufacture
Ing plant. In a few years they were sending out
100000 worth of valentines each season.
The comic valentine, which was painfully ugly
and coarse, and which hourished very broadly at
one time, has now almost entirely passed away, at
least in Its cruder forms. It used to be the great
est happiness of the schoolboy's life to purchase
a very large assortment of these wretched comics
and leave them on the front doorstep of his school
teacher, male or female. Then when he had left a
Few comics on the steps of the village constable
ana paid his respects in similar fashion to the
sunday school superintendent he felt that st. VAL
entine's eve had been well spent. The Joy of st.
valentines day has diminished greatly since the
practice of throwing valentines on the doorstep,
ringing the bell and running, gave place to the less
exciting method of mail delivery. But In spite of
up-to-date Interference with the valentine spirit. st.
Valentines day always will hold its own. The
most famous valentine verse ever written is still
being attached to homemade valentines in pain
fully neat ehildren's handwriting in various
happy districts where boys and girls have real fun
without spending much money for valentines or
anything else. Roses are as red as ever and VIC
lets are still true blue in the joyous land Of hoy
and girl love affairs where reigns the good ST. VAL
entine.