in the choice of gifts, and added to the
mystifications of memory as to who has what? and what hasn't who?
produces a perfect bewilderment. The fluctuations between dominoes, bats
and traps, dolls, la grace, draughts, chess, rocks of Scilly, German
tactics, fox and geese, printing machines, panoramas, puzzles,
farmy-ards, battledores, doll's houses, compasses, knitting cases, and a
myriad others, seem interminable--but an end must come, and the purchaser
and seller find rest.

But all this toil is but the prelude to the grand act of the drama;
Valentine's eve arrived, the play begins in earnest. The streets swarm
with carriers, and baskets laden with treasures--bang, bang, bang go the
knockers, and away rushes the banger, depositing first upon the door-step
some package from the basket of stores--again and again at intervals, at
every door to which a missive is addressed, is the same repeated till the
baskets are empty. Anonymously St. Valentine presents his gifts,
labelled only with "St. Valentine's" love, and "Good morrow, Valentine."

Then within the houses of destination--the screams, the shouts, the
rushings to catch the bang bangs--the flushed faces, sparkling eyes,
rushing feet to pick up the fairy gifts--inscriptions to be interpreted,
mysteries to be unravelled, hoaxes to be found out--great hampers, heavy,
and ticketed "With care, this side upwards," to be unpacked, out of which
jump live little boys with St. Valentine's love to the little ladies
fair--the sham bang bangs, that bring nothing but noise and fun--the mock
parcels that vanish from the door step by invisible strings when the door
opens--monster parcels that dwindle to thread-papers denuded of their
multiplied envelopes, with pithy mottoes, all tending to the final
consummation of good counsel, "Happy is he who expects nothing, and he
will not be disappointed!" It is a glorious night, marvel not that we
would perpetuate so joyous a festivity. We love its mirth, the memory of
its smiles and mysteries of loving kindness, its tender reverential
tributes to old age, and time-tried friendship, amid the throng of
sprightlier festal offerings, that mark the season in our hearths and
homes, as sacred to a love so pure, so true, and holy, that good St.
Valentine himself may feel justly proud of such commemoration.

How and when this peculiar mode of celebrating the festival arose it
would be difficult perhaps to discover. In olden times, as we find b