In 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 letters to other people, generally supposed to be 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 lack-a-daisical 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 "Valentine."

Most of these communications are amatory, some sickish, some nauseating, some satirical, some caustic, some abusive; for it seems to be a time which many a man takes advantage of to revenge some fancied slight from scornful lady, by sending her one of those scandalous nuisances, misnamed "comic Valentines;" because he thinks there will be so many of the foul birds upon the wing that his own carrion fledgling cannot be traced to its filthy nest.

Bull Dogge, who is looking over my shoulder, remarks, that the man who would insult a lady, by sending an anonymous letter, would steal the pennies from a blind man, and then coax his dog away to sell to the butcher boys.

And Bull Dogge is right.

A time when the penny postman is looked for with more interest than if he bore the glad tidings so anxiously expected, "Sebastopol not taken,"—Laura Matilda in the parlor, to whom he brings but one, looks with envious eyes upon Biddy in the kitchen who gets two.

A time when men who haven't got a wife wish they had, and those who are provided with that article of questionable usefulness wish they had another; when maids wish for one husband, and matrons for half a dozen.

A time when nunneries and monasteries go into disrepute, and the accommodating doctrines of Mahomet, and the get-as-many-wives-as-you-can-support-and-keep-them-as-long-as-they-don't-fight principles of Mormonism, are regnant in the land.

And above all, a time when independent bachelors like the deponent, are beset with so many written laudations of the married state, by unknown females, that every single-blessed man in all the land wishes he could take a short nap and wake up with a good-looking wife and nine large-sized children.

On the morning of this traditional pairing-off day, the postman brought me seventeen letters, all unpaid, and all from "Valentine." Retired to my room—closed the curtains—lit the gas—placed before me a mug of ale and two soda crackers, and proceeded to open and examine the documents.

No. 1 was sealed with beeswax and stamped with a thimble; and from its brown complexion, I should think it had fallen into the dishwater, and been dried with a hot flatiron. I couldn't read it very well—there wasn't any capitals—the g's and y's had tails with as many turns as a corkscrew, the p's bore a strong resemblance to inky hair pins, the h's resembled miniature plum trees; every f looked like a fish-pole, and every z like a frog's foot, and the signature I should judge had been made by the ink bottle, which must have been taken suddenly sea-sick, and have used the paper as a substitute for the wash-bowl.

All I could understand of it was "my penn is poor, my inck is pail, my (something) for yew shal never" do something else, I couldn't make out what.

No. 2 was in a lace envelope—cucumber-colored paper, and was perfumed with something that smelt like bumble-bees; handwriting very delicately illegible, proving that it came from a lady—spelling very bad, showing that it came from a fashionable lady—poetry very unfamiliar, commencing "come rest in this" the next word looked like "boots," but that didn't seem to make sense—concluded it must be "barn-yard" as it went on to say "though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is still here." Couldn't make out whether she was in earnest and wanted me to come and see her, or was only trying to insinuate that I was a stray calf, and had better go home to my bovine parent.

(Bull Dogge says he wonders the ladies take such pains to render their correspondence unreadable—the up-strokes being just visible to the naked eye, and the down-strokes no heavier than a mosquito's leg—and why there is such a universal tendency to make little fat o's and a's just on the line, so that they look like glass beads strung on a horse-hair—and why they will persist in making their chirography generally so uncertain and undecided that a page of ordinary feminine handwriting looks like a sheet of paper covered with a half finished web, made by 'prentice spiders, and condemned as awkwardly clumsy by the journeymen spinners).

Will somebody answer Bull Dogge?

I soon threw aside No. 2 in disgust, and went on to the others—most of them pictured off with hymeneal designs; plethoric cupids with apostolic necks—flowers the like of which never grew anywhere—birds, intended for doves, supposed to be "billing and cooing," but which, in reality, more resembled a couple of wooden decoy ducks fastened together by the heads with a tenpenny nail—a heart stuck through with an arrow, reminding me of a mud turtle on a fish spear—little boy with a feather duster (supposed to represent Hymen with his torch,) standing by a dry-goods box with a marking brush sticking out at the top of it, (put by courtesy for an altar with a flame on it,) going through some kind of a performance with a young couple (supposed to be lovers intent on wedlock,) who appeared as if they had done something they were ashamed of, and deserved to be spanked and put in the trundle-bed—besides vines and wreaths, bows, arrows, babies, and other articles, the necessity of which to human happiness I have ever been at a loss to discover.

Some were complimentary and some abusive—one was from the bar-keeper and hinted at egg-nogg, insinuating that it wasn't paid for—and one I know was from Sandie, for it accused me of taking more than half the bed-clothes on cold nights. But I couldn't find out who wrote the good ones, and couldn't lick anybody for writing the bad ones, as the boys all denied it; and as they cost me three cents each, I've regretted ever since that I didn't sell them to the corner grocery man to wrap round sausages, and invest the money in a flannel nightcap.