[Editor: This article, regarding Valentine’s Day, was published in The Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers (Melbourne, Vic.), 24 February 1875.]
St. Valentine’s Day.
The feast of St. Valentine in the old days conferred upon young persons the privilege of selecting their lovers and mistresses by a sort of “lot” or “chance.” An equal number of bachelors and maids met together, and each, writing their true or feigned name upon separate pieces of paper, which were then rolled up and drawn for by lots, the maids taking the men’s billets and the men the maids; so that each of the young men lighted upon a girl that he called his valentine, and each of the girls upon a young man whom she called hers.
The Valentine of the present day has culminated in the sending of anonymous love-letters, pictures, photographs, expensive caskets, &c. (with a sincere or satirical intention, as the case may be), on the 14th February.
Look up the street. There’s a man overburdened with a heavy sack on his shoulders, trudging along from house to house, now and again depositing his heavy burden on the footpath. It’s only the postman, and the day is the feast of St. Valentine.
Rat-tat! Down comes a dapper housemaid; white cap, white apron. “For you, Miss,” says Postman. Look at her face as it reddens like the sunny side of a peach, when she takes the letter. There! she runs up stairs to her little room, slams the door, sits on her bed, tears open the letter. What is it? Only a couple of silver hearts frizzling with an arrow stuck in as a skewer, and lots of naked Cupids looking on, laughing and chubby.
Rat-tat. Servant. One, two, three, four letters; one “On her Majesty’s service.” Paterfamilias, materfamilias, and family at breakfast. Look at sweet Adeline, how gingerly she opens a fretted lace-work, containing every insignia of the altar hymeneal, and how she peeps in, and, reading the mottoes, the blood rushes to her fair face. Mark paterfamilias! See, he frowns, tucks “Her Majesty’s Service” letter in his pocket, and resumes his morning’s Age. What, why is this? Have not his employes sent him a pretty severe dose for reducing their screw, and don’t they hold the mirror up to him that he can observe and feel his own meanness!
Rat-tat, rat-tat; significant of a social method of expressing grudge, mischief, love, hatred, insinuations, and ofttimes plain honest truth on this feast of St. Valentine.
Source:
The Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers (Melbourne, Vic.), 24 February 1875, p. 26 (10th page of this issue)
Also published in:
The Illustrated Adelaide News (Adelaide, SA), 1 February 1876, p. 6 [illustration on p. 4]
Editor’s notes:
The illustration, titled “St. Valentines Day”, appeared on page 17 (1st page of that issue) of the same issue of The Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers. It shows a family eagerly greeting a postman, waiting to get their Valentine’s Day cards.
Acknowledgments are due to the State Library of Victoria for their digitization work (see the Trove entry for the illustration accompanying this article).
&c. = &c. = an alternative form of “etc.”; an abbreviation of “et cetera” (also spelt “etcetera”), a Latin term (“et” meaning “and”, “cetera” meaning “the rest”) which is translated as “and the rest (of such things)”, used in English to mean “and other similar things”, “other unspecified things of the same class”, or “and so forth”
Age = The Age (Melbourne, Vic.) newspaper
employe = (commonly spelt “employé”): an archaic form of “employee”; plural: employés (employees)
ofttimes = (also spelt: oft-times) oftentimes, often, on many occasions; frequently, repeatedly (from Old English, “oft” meaning “often” or “frequently”)
screw = in a work context, a reference to wages or salary
[Editor: The original text has been separated into paragraphs.]
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