People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1894 — THE FOURTEENTH OF FEBRUARY. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE FOURTEENTH OF FEBRUARY.

HERE was an unusual flutter in the little town of Pattieton. Joseph Jennings was coming home again. Years ago, when the old red

schoolhouse was filled with the boys and girls of the town, February 14th was as great a holiday as could be made of it with school in session, and somebody had a party, or some one got up a ride, or there was a grand popcorn frolic. In fact, there was always ■•something going on that day, if all other days in the year should be dry as dust, though that could never be the case with forty girls and boys to make them lively. The excuse for this extra fun on the 14th was that it was Jo Jennings’ birthday, and they must celebrate it; and when any of the parents tried to remonstrate the iwady argument was that they didn’t celebrate other birthdays, because nobody was ever born on a day they could celebrate, and with such a good reason what could be said further? All the girls sent him valentines, and all the boys wished they could change places for just that one •day. As he grew older the custom remained the same, for he was, and had always been, a great favorite in the town. The mail bag which came in on the stage that night fairly bulged with the number of missives directed to J. J. Jennings. To be sure some of the girls had married and left the town, but all who remained kept up the custom. t Everybody called him Jo, and as he came back year after year seemingly unchanged in his love for the old home, and just as cordial with all the old friends, they decided that travel could never make him other than the kindhearted friend he had ever been.

Always impartial in his treatment of the young ladies of the place, he took one to the picnic, another out driving behind the fat, black pony, still another on the harbor excursion, and a •different one up the mountain after blueberries. Everybody, called hrs mother Aunt Judith, because she was such a lovely old lady they simply couldn’t help it. A face sweet and beautiful in its youth only grew more sweet as the years made wrinkles and drew lines here and there. The eyes, always sympathetic, only filled with a deeper light of love •as time fled. The hair, in earlier years a. rich crown for the erect’ figure, only laid itself in more caressing waves about the face. Truly she had grown old gracefully. An invalid, she was ■cared for by her eldest daughter, .Martha, who had already sent away a lover because she would not leave her home just now. She did wish Jo would marry and bring his wife home to live. That would make all clear. Martha could be happy, and she knew for .herself she •could love anyone of the village girls whom he might choose for a wife. Why didn’t he care for some one? The year before something .had happened! They had all sent valentines according to the usual custom. There were eighteen of them. The next morning, down at the Corners, Jo was talking to Jimmie Hazen, and Jimmie asked, ■carelessly: “How many this time, Jo?” “Eighteen splendid ones; but I don’t s’pose one or the senders can make a biscuit to save her life.” Of course Jimmie mentioned it as a good joke to his sister Ruth, who had black eyes and a lively temper of her •own, and she told the other girls, con-.-sldering it anything but a joke, and that was wh jt caused all the flutter. Now Ruth couldn’t make biscuits, and .she had always thought Jo just a little better than vrdinary mortals, and to have him »ome down to biscuits, and then to throw out such a remark S 3 that to her brother! He probably meant tc have Jimmie tell her. Ruth told the girls at the next social, and, with her eyes flashing, declared she wished she could bake, but she couldn’t, and she hated dough; but if co’iW make biscuits she’d make a

bushel and smother him- So now! She cried at home, and thought it very unkind of Jo, and declared she wouldn’t send another valentine as long as she lived. But when the summer came ana the girls, not forgetting the at their lack of ability, took to refusing him when invited to picnics or other places of amusements, Ruth was sorry, and yet glad, for she couldn’t stop liking him all at once, even if she tried her best So when the anniversary came again she decided she would just send as always and not mind what had probably thoughtlessly been said. No one knew why the daughters of the several households were so anxious to learn to make bread, but it was a fact that every girl in town suddenly developed a desire to relieve her mother of the biscuit making. And yet not every one; for little Ruth Hazen declared she couldn’t aud wouldn’t, and stuck to the china painting which she sent regularly to Rockland, and which brought her more money than carloads of biscuits would have done. Valentine’s day brought only one valentine for Jo, and he opened it wondering if his friends had forgotten that it was his birthday, or whether they thought it time to drop the old custom. He wondered who had remembered him. The roses looked like’ some he had every year, half blown and always pink. Ruth Hazen always wanted a bunch of the blush roses by the door, and he remembered so well how she buried her face in the last ones he had carried to her —yes, it must have been Ruth. Puzzled and a little troubled at the dearth of valentines, he knew not what to make of it Then Grace Eames had refused to ride with him last summer, giving a good reason, of course, but one that he knew could hate been laid aside. After supper a rattling wagon drove to the door, aud its driver, after knocking, left on the step a bundle directed to “J. J. Jennings.” “There, that’s the Conant’s wagon, I know; and this is Jennie’s valentine.” The bundle contained a dozen of the lightest biscuit ever seen, and this rhyme: A valentine I dared not make, But biscuits by the dozen bake. Another knock, and another parcel was deposited; another dozen biscuits so like the first that they might have been made by the same hands, and this rhyme: You told the saint I didn’t know how To make a good biscuit; Just look at this, now. Sixteen dozen biscuits in sixteen different bundles were spread on the table

before nine o’clock, each bundle containing a scrap appropriate to the day and the unusual gift. Jo lay awake nearly all night trying to think what could have brought this avalanche of bread upon him, and. finally concluded it must have been that little speech of his about the girls not knowing how to make biscuits. But his mind kept returning to Ruth’s valentine, and by and by he decided that a man didn’t need but one valentine, especially if he had plenty of bread. So, toward morning, he dropped asleep to dream of being shut up in a tower and not allowed anything but biscuits to eat or sleep on, and the only thing he could see for miles were fields of biscuits in all shades of brown, which he was told he must eat as fast as they ripened. Then he saw Ruth, with her hair flying wildly about her face, and, when he looked closely, he found that what he thought hair was only hundreds of valentines, and when he tried to take them off her head she suddenly turned into a plump biscuit, and the astonishment awoke him, to find that the sun shone, and also that his head ached. “I wish you’d go over to the mills this morning and see about that grain,” said Martha, when he came down complaining of such a dismal headache. “The air’ll do you good, and you can take Ruth along. You go right by there.” Ruth’s eyes were red when she came to the door, for she had secretly shed tears that she had not tried to learn breadmaking, so as to have had her dozen with the rest which she knew must be reposing on the pantry shelves in the Jennings house. She had told herself a hundred times she didn’t care, but it didn’t alter the feeling in the least, and she knew every time she repeated it that deep in her heart she did care a

good deal. Yes, she would go, and as she pinned on the jaunty black hat with its red wing, and tucked her hands in a wee muff, she thought to herself there might be some chance to explain why she hadn’t done as well as the rest of the girls. There had been little snow this year, and the ground was hard and smooth. Only a few drifts by the roadside and in the fields, and these were fast going in the bright sunlight. The black horse was in high spirits, the air was clear. Jo’s headache drifted away, Ruth was so pretty to look at, and hjs mother liked her so well—- “ You haven’t heard a word I said!” “Well, when I get old and feeble. I want to have a few of my senses left, and so while I had such good use for my eyes I thought I would let ncy ears rest” Ruth laughed, but she would not look at him again, for she had seen the love in his eyes when she did look, and she decided that the view toward the hills was better for her than the one so near at hand. “Did you know I had but one valentine this year?” with a peculiar emphasis on the “one.” “Didn’t you have more last year?” “Yes, year before last 1 had twenty, and last year eighteen, and now this year 1 am narrowed down to one.” “Why, didn’t the girls—” “Yes, seventeen of them djd. Sixteen thought T had got beyond the age of romance and now ought to live on the solids of life, but the seventeenth still thought I might cling to a little of the romance. I am glad there is one who still holds to the old custom. It isn’t nice to think one is dropped out of the old life.” “Oh! I am sure the girls didn’t mean —” she stopped, for though she might explain the meaning of the biscuit, could she explain the one valentine? “Cousin Albert told me I shouldn’t always have so many valentines, and he was right. But it is only the end of a lesson that I have been a long time learning. Martha says a man can have but one valentine. Now that I have really come down to one, I find that I have never had but one, That I have looked for yours first, and last night when I thought what it would mean if you stop sending each year I could hardly wait to see you and ask if you would come yourself as my valentine. Ruth, I love you dearly; I think I always have.” Ruth still kept her eyes on the faraway hills. But her heart was as full of joy as her eyes were full of tears. Now she could say what she had been trying to ever since they started. “I

have felt so badly that I couldn’t send when I found you didn’t like valentines—” “But I do.” “Well, you said you didn't s’pose one of the girls could make biscuits, and we declared we’d like to smother you in them—” “That explains it. I couldn’t think what I had done to bring down a flood of that kind. Well, I was overwhelmed if not smothered. ” . “But I can’t make biscuits and —” “If you could see the stacks at home, sixteen dozen of them, you wouldn’t wonder that I say with emphasis, I’m glad you can’t!” Ruth turned with laughing eyes: “Then I needn’t apologize?" “No, indeed. I like valentines better than biscuits, but I guess it needed just that to show me that I did.” “Sixteen dozen! What are you going to do with them all?” “Take you home with me to help eat them. You haven’t answered my question yet.” “I’m too young,” but a bright blush was on the face turned again to the hills. Jo laughed, liking her shy ways, yet sure that he had seen favor in her eyes. He wished he could surprise her into turning this way again. “Yes, I think lam too young. Why, I’m only thirty; but we can both be growing older as fast as we can, and by next June we shall be old enough.” He insisted that her aid was necessary in consuming these biscuits, so they stopped to tell Mrs. Hazen. What she could have seen in his face I cannot tell, but she went into the house with the remark that it “wouldn’t be the last meal Ruth would eat in the Jennings house. ” He lifted her from the carriage with a mute caress, and, leaving the black

pony to walk leisurely into the open door of the barn, ha led Ruth into the sunny sitting-room where his mother sat bi her cushioned easy-chair, and said: “I have brought home a valentine, mother. One I am going to keep,” and while she drew the blushing face down to hers with her thin, white hands and kissed it, Jo went out hurriedly to look after the pony and whisper in her ear that he was so happy. Meeting Martha on the way he stopped to tell her that Ruth would stay to dinner, Wt his face must have been a very telltale one, for he might just as well have said that she was to stay forever, and Martha shook hands with a hearty “I’m so glad, Jo.”—Mrs. N. A. M. Roe, in Good Housekeeping.

“I HAVE BROUGHT HOME A VALENTINE.”