CHAPTER I. Polly was seven years old before she knew anything about valentines.

" "What's Valentine's Day?" "Why, it's the day you send valentines, to be sure,the 14th of February.

"She didn't know a thing about valentines; never heard of them till just now," Jane explained to Martha.

Those girls across the street know girls and boys who have fathers and mothers to give them money to buy valentines with.

" "And valentines," cried Polly.

"Some time you'll dream you're an heiress, and wake up counting out your money to buy valentines with.

This hope had warmed her heart for weeks, so that when she was smarting under the first sense of disappointment about the valentines, she consoled herself with the thought of the little paint-box that might soon be hers.

Polly obeyed her; but as she glanced at the cheap little five-cent valentines the clerk put before her, she shook her head disdainfully.

Here are the twenty-five-cent valentines;" and he uncovered another box, and left her to make her choice.

She glanced down at the twenty-five-cent valentines.

" The blurring tears made Polly's eyes so dim here, she could scarcely see; but through the dimness she sent one last good-by look at the dear paint-box, and then resolutely turned to the valentines, from which she selected the biggest and "bewt'f'lest" she could find, the lady crowning her kindness by stamping and directing it, and finally mailing it in the letterbox just outside the shop door.

She had not the means of refreshing it with pretty novelties and sentimental toys in that line,with albums and valentines, fancy portfolios and pocket-secretaries, pearl paper-knives and tortoise-shell cardcases, Chinese puzzles and papier-maché checker-boards.

~Sour Valentines.~ To-morrow is the day for valentines; Then let me leave my thesis for a space, Lower the lamplight on these weary lines, And dream a little in the shadowed place.

but when they aske you what it meanes, say you this: To morrow is S. Valentines day, all in the morning betime,

Many such allurements there are, nods, jests, winks, smiles, wrestlings, tokens, favours, symbols, letters, valentines, &c.

" Choosing lords, ladies, kings, queens, and valentines, &c., they go by couples, "Corydon's Phillis, Nysa and Mopsus, With dainty Dousibel and Sir Tophus.

, the invention of which is attributed to the troubadour Guillaume Adhémar, the jeu des Valentines, or the game of lovers, and the numerous games of forfeits, which have come down to us from the Courts of Love of the Middle Ages, we find to be somewhat deprived of their original simplicity in the way they are now played in country-houses in the winter and at village festivals in the summer.

As she sat there in her kitchen, wearing her soap-stained and faded blue gingham, and the dust-cap pushed back at a rakish angle, a simpering little smile about her lips, she was really very much like the disappointed old maids you used to see so cruelly pictured in the comic valentines.

She pawed over old valentines, bonnets of a by-gone day, lace mitts, and all the useless relics that are usually found in mother's trunk that had been her mother's.

EDWARDS, MILDRED S. Valentines.

Ma[r]jorie H. Buell (PWH); 9Feb73; R544861. Let's be valentines.

But I have sought him, never a bending brow Of any Hill or Glade, the wind sings through, Nor a green bank, nor shade where Shepherds use To sit and Riddle, sweetly pipe, or chuse Their Valentines, that I have mist, to find My love in.

The festivity lasted till the fire died out, and then the spectators dispersed through the streets, stopping under the windows of the houses and proclaiming the names of the féchenots and féchenottes or Valentines whom the popular voice had assigned to each other.

The exchange of presents between the Valentines went by the name of ransom or redemption (rachat), because it was supposed to redeem the couple from the flames of the bonfire.

His little friends wrote in reply, but by no means such carefully-worded letters; they also favoured him with shoals of Christmas cards and showers of valentines, but his letters never got beyond the schoolroom; and if John Mortimer's keen eyes had ever fallen on them, it would have availed nothing.