“Sell many valentines? No, not many” said a stationer to a SPECTATOR reporter yesterday morning.
Spectator February 14, 1885
A conversation between a Spectator reporter and a local owner of a stationery shop on February 14, 1885
“The observance of the day is dying out, and for years past the sale of February sentiment has gradually decreased. This year I suppose I have sold about a thousand comic and sentimental valentines, and I should judge there would about 5,000 or 6,000 sold in the city altogether. The fashion is coming in of sending books and gloves and things of that sort in place of the pretty but useless cards; but very little of this s done and I would be afraid to wager that in a couple of years the custom of sending will have ceased almost altogether. Why do I think this? Well, because the sale has gone down so, and because the majority of people are sending Easter cards instead. It is only a few years since this custom was introduced, but it has steadily increased and is now far ahead of the valentine sales. The so-called comic valentines have done a good deal to kill the custom, for they have caricatured the day and destroyed really all the sentiment that made it worth the while remembering.”
“Where are valentines made?”
“Well, the ones we sell are principally manufactured in America. These, what you might call fret-work ones come from Germany, but the others are made in Boston, New York and elsewhere in the States. These small fancy ones that sell for a cent we have a large sale for. They are rather pretty, and as they are cheap, children like to send them.”
“The sentiment on some of these seems rather pretty.”
“Very true. This rather nice, now :
My thoughts by day,
My dreams by night,
Are but of thee, only thee.
Anything like that is calculated to make the recipient feel good.”
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