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And yet the heaven
w Provoking joy and swift surprise,
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\ Like the rarest tinteq
NZ a richly favored close
X Within some princely gay
Thou standest in the ranks seven
The makhless-faer, unquestioned queen,
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Beautiful superb Hie
None there is more fair to
Not Helen of the Tropn Ags,
Dido's nor Cleopatra's face \,,”
And now of you should grant to me
The utmost that hugh hope can sce
No force our hearts shall scver
But in a realm of subtlest grace
My love shall have the crowning place,
~ And joy will ven forever
JOEL BENTOMN.
BEY ’
et
. And then come spectral shades about
7 eZ
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Fix VALENTINE
Til Tortweang dovbt is painful,
LT)
Imprints no look disdainful.
Often within those orbs of blue
1 sec a glance so kind and true
Its welcome seems undoubted,
No rule the pretty picture out,
0
i le,
Than you the Side worl
Could raphe so a red]
Be A X
Wears So ih
NA I ally
\, \
} Gi: Y= ,
A RANDOM DART.
HEY had laughed
until they were
tired, Lily Mayne
and Jessie and
Janie Norton,
Miss Estil’s pretty
nieces. ~~ Valen-
tine’s day was just
ahead, and they
had spent a morn-
ing hour in decid-
ing where to send
a baker’s dozen of
gorgeous missives.
“They are all
beautifully inap-
propriate,’’ Jessie
said, pushing
away the lot of ad-
dressed envelopes with a laughing sigh.
‘‘But this one. Who will it fit worst? 1
can’t for my life decide! It must be sent,
though. Must! That's flat. It cost a
whole half dollar. It would be simply
awful to let that amount of valentine go
to waste.”
“I don’t see why we ever bought it,”
Janie said, eying it critically. Lily laugh-
ed again. ‘Oh, we had to. It appealed
80 strongly to your artistic sense,’’ she
said. Then she spread out the gay sheet
and waved it flaglike over her head. It
showed a very pink Cupid in the act of
launching a silver dart much bigger than
himself, presumably at a lightly clad
young person smiling down at him from
a cloud.
‘‘There is something preraphaelite al-
most in the simplicity of it,’ Jessie said
gravely, but with twinkling eyes. Janie
made a mutinous mouth at them and be-
gan to rummage in the card basket. Lily
caught her hand, saying with a compre-
hending nod: ‘I have just thought! I
know what we will do.”’
‘“What?”’ asked the others in the samo
breath. Lily ran through the cards in si-
lence for a minute, then flung a handful
of them into a work bag, saying:
‘We will tempt fate in earnest. Put in
your hand, Janie, and draw a card. Who-
ever it may be, he gets this valentine.”
‘Major Jchn Marshall Sterling,’’ Janie
read from the bit of pasteboard she had
drawn. All of them laughed more than
ever.
‘Poor old major! I am sure he has for-
gotten what a valentine looks like,’’ Jes-
sie said, patting the pink Cupid as she
spoke.
“I don’t believe he ever knew. He was
born old. I am sure of it,’’ Lily answered.
Janie shook her head.
‘‘No, he wasn’t,” she said. ‘I heard
Auntie Louise say the other day that he
was the gayest young fellow until he went
out west to fight Indians. Something
dreadful must have happened there, for
ever since he came back invalided he has
been just as we see him now.”
‘‘He is not really so old either,’ Lily
said; ‘‘only 50. It is that troublesome
bullet in his chest which makes his hair
8o gray, I dare say’’—
“You are a destroyer of romance, Lily.
You deserve to be severely suppressed, ’’
Jessie interrupted. ‘‘You ought to have
left us the belief that it was unrequited
love which had bleached his poll.’
‘Stop your nonsense and help me with
these cards,” Liiy said. ‘‘Unless they aro
ready at once we will never get them sent
in time. Valentines are goed fun, but a
valentine party is ever so much hetter.’’
“Wisdom, thy name is Lily,’ Jessie re-
torted, rolling up her eyes. Then the three
fell silently and furiously to work upon
the envelopes piled at one side of the table,
addressing them and slipping inside cards
which bade all Miss Estil’s friends come
and be merry at her house upon Feb. 14.
Perhaps it was automatic action; per-
haps, also, fate guided her fingers. Janie
never knew. The fact remains that one
of the fairly engraved cards went to keep
the pink Cupid company upon his journey
to Major Sterling. In due season the post
delivered both at the major’s door. The
major himself took them in and blushed
through all his tan and grizzle at sight of
the big envelope, which had a spray of
: roses and a pair of turtledoves embossed
i upon the flap.
‘I wonder what girl is trying to guy
me,’’ he said as he sat down in his own
snuggery, tossing it to the other side of
the table. In reality he was full of eager
curiosity to see the inside of it, but a sense
of what was seemly for a man of his
gray hair made him leave it ostentatiously
alone until he had read through all the
morning’s grist of letters. He even an-
swered one or two of the most imperative
and read another page of the morning pa-
per before he allowed himself to touch his
valentine.
‘‘Really that is not so bad—not half so
bad as it might have been,’’ he said, hold-
ing the pink Cupid at arm’s length.
Through living so much alone he had got
into a way of talking to himself. He had
few visitors. * His own man, Mulligan,
was a model of discreet silence, and Ma-
rina, cook and housemaid, never ventured
to address more than three consecutive
words to ‘‘the master.’’ Semioccasionally
he spent an evening at the club. Once a
year he made a round of ceremonious calls
upon old friends—friends that had been
his mother’s rather than hisown. Other-
wise he kept entirely to himself.
That made talk, of course. His neigh-
bors and their gossips could not under-
stand why a retired officer, more than rea-
sonably well to do outside of his half pay,
should elect to live thus, more than half a
hermit. What did it matter that he was a
bachelor, without near ties of blood?
There was Louise Estil, almost his age
and single, devoting herself to many
things, and especially keeping in touch
with social life. The girls, Lily and Jessie
and Janie, were not really her nieces, only
the children of her step brothers and sis-
ters. Yet she kept them about her half
the time and gave them all sorts of pleas-
ures. Even when they were absent she
was never at a loss. All tle young people,
especially all the young men, adopted her
as aunt and haunted her cozy house.
Major Sterling knew all this. Some-
times he smiled over it. Oftener he sighed.
The smile was for the hints of doubled
down pages in his past; the sigh for the
intolerable loneliness more and more en-
veloping his present. He had a man’s
memories of women whom he had fancied,
some hotly for the minute, some delicate-
ly afar off and wavering. He had never
seriously made love to any of them, main-
ly that he had been too busy with doing a
man’s part out on the frontier. He had
always meant to marry; he might even
have done it long ago, only that chance
“I KNOW WHAT WE WILL DO.”
had such a knack of whisking him away
from the enchanter of the minute and set-
ting him where there was fighting to be
done.
‘‘H-m-m! This is shockingly inappro-
priate,”’ he said at last, nodding to the
Cupid. “The arrow is all very well—I
have seen bigger ones, though I doubt if
they were so dangerous. But why! Oh,
why are you not shooting it ata man?
You cannot be meant to personify me! I
am the last fellow in the world for such a
thing as that. I wonder who sent you.
The lady there, up in the clouds, is not
the least bit like anybody I know.” With
that he took up the envelope and carefully
scrutinized the address. It was written
in a big land, fashionably angular, and
noncominittal. As be fingered it he felt
something inside. He turned it upside
down, shook it and sent the card spinning
to the other edge of the table.
‘I see!” he said, his eyes twinkling.
“Those wicked, _wicked young persons
Miss Estil harbors have plotted against
us, their elders and betters. They think
I may be fooled into believing she had a
hand in it. Asif I did not know Louise
Estil better than anybody in the world.’
Then in mind he ran over their long ac-
quaintance. He had been dangerously
near loving her back in the old days when
she was his mother’s pet, and Tom, her
youngest stepbrother, his own especial i
chum. He remembered quite clearly how |
it had made his heart beat to see her come |
tripping up the walk, and how gloomy he |
had been for a whole week when Tom let
him know, quite incidentally and as a
matter of course, that Louise was going
to marry young Cary, the railroad presi-
dent’s son. Then he had pulled himself
together and gone west, putting her so
completely out of his mind that he had
felt only a mild surprise at meeting Cary
ten years after with a wife upon his arm
as unlike Louise as possible. And it had
not given him the least thrill to come back
and find her free. He had listened with
only languid interest when a club veteran
told him how Louise had sent away her
rich lover for no other reason than that
she did not choose to marry him.
‘“You do not expect me—not the least,
young ladies,’’ he said after a little, smil-
ing at the faces his fancy conjured up.
“But I shall go to your party. More, I
shall claim my rights as a valentine. As
I remember, if you found out what girl
had sent one you were entitled to kiss her
in the face of daylight. I wonder how you
will like that. I wonder still more if I
shall have courage to carry through so
daring an enterprise.’’
Man proposes. St. Valentine sometimes
disposes. Major Sterling found that out
beyond peradventure. The Estil house
stood in the town’s outskirts, sitting quite
apart in the middle of wide grounds. It
was gray and solid and roomy, with doors
hospitably wide. He found it lighted up
from top to bottom and within it as merry
a company as man might care to see. It
gave him an odd turn to be met by young
Tom Norton, son and image of his old
chum, and hustled off into the big sitting
room, where 20 other men were already
congregated.
‘You see,” Tom explained as they went
along, ‘‘Janie has got this in hand. She
is always up to some mischief. I tried to
make her hear reason; but, you know,
girls never will pay attention to what
their brothers say.”
‘‘Janie looks like a sensible girl. Iam
not afraid to trust her,”’ the major return-
ed. Tom gave a little sniff, saying: ** Wait
until I tell you about it. She is wild for
some new valentine nonsense. In fact,
all of them are. They heard about looking
out of the window. As they can’t manage
SENT THE CARD SPINNING TO THE OTHER END
OF THE TABLE.
that they have hit on something worse.
When everybody has come, I am to send
you men, one at a time, into the library.
They have rigged a sort of window there at
the back, and the girl who will be stand-
ing behind i6 will, of course, sce you and
be your valentine for the rest of the night.
They wanted to make it out the rest of
the year, but I put my foot on that. The
girls draw lots as to who shall first choose.
It really is not a matter of choice, though;
it’s rather all blind luck.”’
‘Good luck for some of us, 1 hope,” the |
major said, laughing. ‘‘Do you know,
Tom, it strikes me as a great scheme.’
‘Oh, I suppose youdon’t mind. Women
must be all pretty well alike when one
comes to your age,”’ Tom said, a little
stiffly. ‘‘But if you cared about one and
saw her tagged off with another fellow—
well, I think you would see the differ-
ence.’’
‘We are ready! Bring on your sacri-
fices!”’ Janie called from outside the door.
Tom had passed about small numbered
slips. Now he called aloud, ** Advance,
No. 1, and meet your doom. ’’
No. 1 was Timmy Logan, the minister’s
son, slight, mild, blue eyed and senti- |
mental. A silent laugh went about when
at the end of a minute he was seen to
pass on into the long parlors with Mrs.
Beckly, 40, fat and jolly, upon his arm.
“Lord! The misfits of this night!”’ Tom
groaned as No. 2 went in. ‘‘Don’t lose
your nerve or your number, major. Maybe
you'll get the youngest pretty girl of all.”
“I'll be satisfied with any,’’ Major Ster-
ling answered. His next neighbor said
in a stage whisper, ‘‘ Tom would be jolly
#s a grig if he could just arrange to swap
with whoever gets his cousin Jessie.’
Again Major Sterling smiled. It was so
like the Tom of old, this wanting all
things to give way for the gratification of
his momentary whim.
“I don’t choose at all. Iam No. 0,”
Tom said, trying to look dignified. ‘We
are hoth naughts, Aunt Louise and I.
That shows the naughts are sometimes
pretty significant figures. ’’
The choosing went on rapidly. Fate
was madly, merrily perverse. Nearly ev-
ery couple was humorously mismatched.
Major Sterling found himself paired with
Janie Norton, and Tom's eyes flashed hate
as he saw Jessie, his Jessie, pass out, fore-
doomed to the attentions of Royce Ford,
his most dangerous rival. Lily fell to the
lot of Mr. Ware, a widower, newly set out,
and still in the first excess of widower
folly.
‘‘Now, do you like playing providence?
I hear you are responsible for all this,”
Major Sterling said in Janie’s ear as they
watched the throng. She gave her shoul-
ders the least possible shrug as she replied:
‘‘I.am not playing providence. I only
wish I might.”’
“What would you do first?’’ he asked.
‘Give all my friends just enough misery
to accent their happiness and my enemies
happiness enough to make their misery
more miserable,’ she answered promptly.
‘What an unamiable young person you
a. Ma
=
are, to be sure!’”’ he said, with a little
laugh. ‘‘I see you have begun your work,
Tell me, please, how 1 came to be reckon-
ed among your enemies?’’ .
“I don’t know what you mean,’ Janie
protested, with, however, a suspicious red
in her cheeks. Major Sterling looked
down at her and shook his head, saying
impersonally: ‘“‘Of course I am not bold
enough to assert that you do anything
badly. But there are things that you do
better than—well, tampering with the
truth.’’
‘Really, I don’t know’’— Janie began
again, then stopped, arrested by a signifi-
cant motion toward his breast pocket.
“I must be your enemy,” he said, still
smiling. ‘‘I have evidence right here—
pink evidence, with a silver dart, and
clouds and a lady who might easily catch
cold.” \
‘‘What a very remarkable sort of evi-
dence,’’ Janie said loftily, her eyes by this
time the very pattern of limpid innocence.
‘Still, I don’t in the least see how you
make out’’—
‘That it is happiness enough to increase
my misery?’’ he interrupted. ‘*You say
that, yet know it brought me here.’
*“Could you be in a better place?” Janie
queried. She was rapidly getting over the
shock of finding out that the staid major
could be gallant upon occasion. He drew her
hand closer within his arm as he answer-
ed: “No. Iam more than pleased with
the state of life wherein I now find myself.
But think of having to give it up so soon!
Don’t you think a mummy that had by
chance slipped out of cerements would
find it a bit hard to think of going back
into them?”’
‘‘I should not be sorry for—a mummy
who need not go back,’’ Janie said, look-
ing sedulously away. Unconsciously Ma-
jor Sterling sighed.
‘No, I suppose not,’’ he said thoughi-
fully, even a little wistfully. ‘‘If only I
were like your Aunt Louise’’—
“Why! Has Tom told you about that?
Auntie will never forgive him. She did
not mean to tell anybody, not even the
minister, until just before’’— Janie be-
gan, her eyes full of wonder. Major Ster-
ling stopped her. He was equally bewil-
dered, partly by what she had said, more
by the implication of it.
“I have been told nothing. { don’t
know what you mean! Not the least in
the world,” he said, speaking very low.
‘‘But do tell me! Please! So much may
depend on it. If I were like Aunt Louise
—what?”’
**Why, you might get married and live
happy ever after,” Janie said, looking
down. ‘‘You won't tell it. She is going
to marry next month. No, it is not Mr.
Cary. He courted her as soon as his wife
died, but she would not look at him.
None of us has seen our new uncle. She
met him at the seashore. He is a genius,
delicate, five years younger than she, and
so rich he needs some one to take care of
him very badly. At first she was afraid
people would say she wanted his money.
But love found a way around pride. Real
love always does overcome everything.”
*‘I wonder if it can overcome gray hair
and 30 years,” the major said, with a
shake in his voice. Janie shot a glance at
him. He was deadly pale. They had
moved away from the crewd and stood al-
EAR LESNAR
i \ ih
rine
VIUDIIAN
TEPLDO +
i
‘YOU KNOW IT BROUGHT ME HERE.”
most alone upon the broad, lighted porch.
She put both hands over his arm and
leaned a little to him as she answered:
‘I think, yes! I am sure it could, if—
if you gave it a decent chance.”
* * * * * * *
Six months after they were married.
Cupid’s random dart proved more effectual
than many which were carefully aimed.
A Valentine.
Should we stray, lost within a lonesome land
Where flowers refuse to bloom and deathful
sand
O’ersweeps the way by which we may return,
Love will still lead, though, lost, we wait and
yearn.
And if by chance of grief and sorrowing
Our disjoined hands nc longer clasp and cling,
Some whispered word of love will find its
place,
Exalting us to newer peace and grace.
Let us twain keep our faith till death do part
Us, thou and I! The world’s in rhyme, sweet.
heart;
Thy heart and mine are
« Valentine.
= Ze Aa NIT. Sho
MN
Good St. Valentine.
He Has Hot Deserted His Post In the Humdrum
World.—A Word About the Wide Though Varying
Demands For Valentines—Immense Establish-
ments With Capital and Costly Talent Produce
Them—And They Go.
Every valentine season brings out a re-
tone, to the effect that the custom of
sending tokens is dying out.
to conjecture who and what manner of
people the gloomy essayists must be,
whether too old to experience a thrill of
happiness or too blind to observe the life
of the common folks who keep the earth
moving. Perhaps they are also the preach-
ers and moralists who now and then ex-
claim with extended hands and wide open
eyes that marriage is getting to be a thing
of the past.
It is not a far cry from valentine send-
ing and receiving to the day of Cupid’s
victory and crowning. Whether valentines
always mean that consummation or not
every union of hearts and hands implies
countless days sacred to Cupid’s patron
earnest of more devotees for the same
shrine. The boys and girls are not going
to slight or miss the privileges their eld-
ers remember too joyfully to let pass in
silence.
Then, too, there is the interchange of
birthday greetings do not imply, something
more than mere friendship, but less than
marital love because the fates will have it
80; also the fun, for there is fun with-
out a sting in it for sensible folk who
make the carnival day one of innocent
merriment. Burns wrote sublimely,
Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us,
and why may not the power work through
truth telling comic valentines? They are
much pleasanter to take than Caudle lec-
tures or sermons aimed at a mark.
No, the most fashionable streets of
New York, Philadelphia or Boston are
not the places to study: the extent of
St. Valentine worship in this year 1898.
There the reporter will hear from grum-
blers the same old story that the sales
are falling off year by year. That means
counted in dollars and of the gilt edged
kinds. A trip along the side streets may
throw a little light on the subject, but
such tradesmen are often jealous and dis-
posed to grumble over small sales while
cleverly saying nothing of large ones. It's
their business.
But behind the retailer of valentines is
the manufacturer, and bis establishment
tells a different story whatever his lips
may say. One American factory, ambi-
tious enough to have crossed the line into
Greater New York, puts out nearly 20,-
000,000 valentines annually. Over 1,000
designs are laid on the forms each year,
and sales of the most popular reach the
100,000 mark.
From over the ocean come stories also
of vast sums invested in valentine plants,
with ‘sales in average establishments of
$100,000 a year. The valentines must be
expense of new machinery and devices to
meet every fresh fad. Rice paper, plush,
silk fringe and celluloid have come into
play, and when a market gives out for a
certain kind another is found and another
until it is a back number and gives way
to the next favorite. New ideas are the
sine qua non of progress, and these the
artists furnish as readily as for the pic-
ture market and the illustrated press. In
comics the bike has held sway for years
and comes up in new form each anniver-
sary. Latterly the tandem has opened a
new field for fancy, and we have not seen
the last of the new woman nor of the
Roentgen rays.
Today there are more than 30,000,000
American youngsters walking in the foot-
steps of the lovers and frolickers of the past,
and they keep the day as did their elders,
sighing and smiling with Cupid’s patron
gaint.
. His Valentine.
With the valentine before him,
On his knee,
What a precious thought came o’er him:
‘‘Sweet Marie—
Did she send it? Does she love me?’
How he sighed!
‘‘She’s an angel far above me,
But I wish her for my bride.”
Then he kissed the scented letter
On his knee.
‘None could ever love her better—
Sweet Marie!
Did she send it} Has she meant it
Wish I knew!’
Ah, the pity! Susie sent it,
And he did not care for Sue!
EARLE HOOKER EATON
Valentine to a Musical Maid.
In a truly awful manner
You can pound the poor ‘‘pianner,’’
You can bawl,
You have had a singing master,
And can sing the very plaster
Off the wall!
——Subsecribe for the WATCHMAN.
flective essay, generally congratulatory in
One is led
saint well observed in the past and an
those tender—but not the tenderest— senti- ;
ments which Christmas, New Year’s and |
up to date, and yet the profits warrant the |
Pitied Lovers’ Woes.
The Late Rev. Dr. Houghton as the Friend or Louv-
ers In Distress.
Ur. George H. Houghton of the Church
of the Transfiguration in New York city
is among the absent this St. Valentine's
' season. He died very suddenly last No-
vember. The kind hearted pastor of the
: “Little Church Around the Corner’ was
most widely known on account of his
. Christian liberality in burying from his
modest but still orthodox and aristocratic
church the social sinners as well as the
saintly righteous. He also gained repute
as a sort of a latter day St. Valentine, or a
friend of lovers in despair or distress.
*‘It is not true that I am the St. Valen-
tine of Greater New York and vicinity,”
said the genial rector, with a smile, when
spoken to about this phase of his pastoral
duties; ‘““most certainly not. I do not pose
as being a saint of ‘any kind, but I do love
young people, and if my sympathy for
them in their rights and wrongs entitles
me to become a competitor of the good old
priest who was beheaded in the days of
Claudius on account of his popularity
with lovers, why, then, I suppose that I
may be called the modern St. Valentine.
‘I marry all who come to me and want
| to be married. Of course I have to use a
| great deal of judgment in these cases and
| show almost the wisdom of the serpent. I
| put both the man and woman under oath
! and make them solemnly swear that they
are free to marry. If they look very young,
I make tolerably sure that they are of mar-
, riageable age. Then I go ahead, and
| sometimes I help out the marriage service
{ with a little private prayer of my own
{ that they may be happy together. Richard
| Harding Davis’ Van Bibber story of the
; young runaways whom I married is nos
| overdrawn. They were far from home.
| They were young and alone in New York.
Were they not better married? ;
“What do I regard as my special forte?
Well, perhaps it is that of advice giving.
I think I am a born peacemaker, and I
know that with the grace of God I have
patched up many a home quarrel.
‘‘Once upon a time there came to me a
young man carrying two letters from his
ladylove. One of the letters called him
her lovey and her dovey. The other was
very cold and requested that their mar-
riage be put off six months.
‘‘ ‘What shall I do?’ asked he, with the
tears running down his checks. :
‘“ “Answer the lovey, dovey letter,’ said
I, ‘and let the other go.” He did so, and
in a few days they were happily married.
It takes tact and management to make
things go smoothly with our frail human
machinery. '
‘* Are such consultations frequent? They
are. This morning at 5 o’clock I went
out of town to see some people who are at
‘sixes and sevens with each other and the
world. I got home at 5 o’clock this after-
noon, and before I had finished my din-
| her a young man—a fine young fellow—
| came to ask advice. And now I am as
| tired as four or five dogs and couldn’t do
| any more talking even if I had a chance
{todo a bit of matchmaking, which I so
! dearly love.
‘Do I want to become a love saint
some day, like St. Valentine? Ob, no, in-
deed. I only want to be a good priest of
my church. But if people want to call me
the modern St. Valentine, they may do so
in welcome.”’
Just Horrid.
Five mashers, grand in dash and swell,
Ogled a fair one to her dread.
St. Valentine had marked them well,
And straight to each this token sped:
“In this composite valentine
Thy phiz and more beside pray see.
I'll let thee choose the ‘beaut’ for thine—
All mashers look alike to me.”’
» DENE OWEN.
Like Her Face o
Miss Cutting Very—Yes, May, dear, the
valentine Charley sent you was so like
you—so like your face.
Miss May D'Upp—Like my face?
“Yes, dear—hand painted, you know.