s some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
But the ship, the ship is anchor'd safe, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won:
Exult O shores, and ring, O bells.
But I with silent tread,
Walk the spot the captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

WALT WHITMAN.

=St. Valentine's Day=

_February 14_

Custom decrees that on this day the young shall exchange missives in
which the love of the sender is told in verses, pictures, and
sentiments. No reason beyond a guess can be given to connect St.
Valentine with these customs. He was a Christian martyr, about 270 A.D.,
while the practice of sending valentines had its origin in the heathen
worship of Juno. It is Cupid's day, and no boy or girl needs any
encouragement to make the most of it.

=WHO BEGAN IT?=

BY OLIVE THORNE

There's one thing we know positively, that St. Valentine didn't begin
this fourteenth of February excitement; but who _did_ is a question not
so easy to answer. I don't think any one would have begun it if he could
have known what the simple customs of his day would have grown into, or
could even have imagined the frightful valentines that disgrace our
shops to-day.

It began, for us, with our English ancestors, who used to assemble on
the eve of St. Valentine's day, put the names of all the young maidens
promiscuously in a box, and let each bachelor draw one out. The damsel
whose name fell to his lot became his valentine for the year. He wore
her name in his bosom or on his sleeve, and it was his duty to attend
her and protect her. As late as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
this custom was very popular, even among the upper classes.

But the wiseacres have traced the custom farther back. Some of them
think it was begun by the ancient Romans, who had on the fourteenth or
fifteenth of February a festival in honor of Lupercus, "the destroyer of
wolves"--a wolf-destroyer being quite worthy of honor in those wild
days, let me tell you. At this festival it was the custom, among other
curious things, to pair off the young men and maidens in the same chance
way, and with the same result of a yea