Doesticks Author:Q. K. Philander Doesticks Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: accordance with some heathen custom, the origin of which is unknown to moderns, a certain day is selected in the year, when people send hosts of anonymous l... more »etters to other people, generally supposed to he on the subject of love, but which are not unfrequently missives containing angry, malicious, or insulting allusions. This is a day to rejoice the hearts of the penny postmen, who always get their money before they give up the documents. This glorious day is, as most people are aware, the fourteenth of February—time when young ladies expect to receive sentimental poetry by the cord, done up in scented envelopes, written upon gilt- edged paper, and blazoned round with cupids, hearts, darts, bows and arrows, torches, flames, birds, flowers, and all the other paraphernalia of those before-folks- laughed-at- but-in-private- learned-by-heart epistles known as "Valentines." A time when young gentlemen let off their excess of love by lackadaisical missives to their chosen fair; praising in anonymous verses their to-other- eyes - undiscoverable - but- to- their - vision- brilliantly- resplendent charms—poetizing red hair into " auburn ringlets,"—making skim-milk-colored eyes, "orbs, the hue of heaven's own blue,"—causing scraggy, freckled necks to become "fair and graceful as Juno's swans," and deifying squat, dumpy young ladies into "first-rate angels." A time when innumerable people take unauthorised liberties with the name of a venerable Roman, long since defunct, laying themselves under all sorts of obligations, payable in friendship,—pledging any amount of love, and running up tremendous bills of affections, making no solid man responsible therefor, but only signing the all-over-christendom- once-a-year-universally-forged cognomen "Valen- tine." Most of these communicat...« less