Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1900 — VALENTINES OUT OF DATE. [ARTICLE]

VALENTINES OUT OF DATE.

Original Verse, Flowers or Candy Are Now the Proper Gifts. Valentines are out of date. That is the edict of society. When the 14th of February comes around now the proper caper is to write to your lady fair a few choice stanzas of valentine verse, or, in case of your inability to construct proper rhyme, send around a few bunches of vioTeta Or sweet roses or a nice box of candy —a heart shaped box preferred, of course —all, tied up with pretty silk ribbons. The flowers and the candy may not last as long as the poetry, but the flowers will be prettier, the candy will taste better and both will be more appreciated. When it is said that valentines are put of date the statement has to be made, of course, with some reservation. They are out of date as gifts between fashionable adults, but among children they are popular still. Every little lad and lassie watches for the postman on the morning of St, Valentine’s day, of course, and is disappointed if the mail brings no love message, no little embossed and painted Cupid. What is meant by the statement that valentines are out of date is that the day of the three-story, fussed and fuzzy, hand-painted, lint and nonsense creation, over which young ladies used to go into ecstasies of delight and young men used to go into bankruptcy, has long been passed. The custom of sending that sort of remembrance is as dead as the custom of New Year’s calling. It was never a sensible custom anyway, for no young man felt really repaid in putting a week’s salary into a gift to a young lady when, because of the mystery and secrecy that have to be observed in sending valentines, he could not accompany it with his card. It was altogether too discouraging to have his hated rival get the credit for sending a sentimental lot of poetry all done up in fluffy expensiveness for which he had cheerfully emptied his pockets and “gone broke.” Valentines of that sort have had their day and belong now to the sweetly remembered past.