The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

But as every dog has its day, and each succeeding period of life its own interests and allurements, so have customs their appointed seasons, and ideas their set times of holding sway over the popular mind. The wigs and buckled shoes of our forefathers, the ringlets of our grandmothers, which in their day were things of fashion, have lapsed into the category of the curious, and have to us none other than an antiquarian interest. The Liberal in politics of to-day becomes the Conservative of to-morrow; and the custom of sending Valentines, at one time so common, that afforded so great pleasure not only to the young, but sometimes to those of riper years, has already had its death-knell sounded; and at the present rate of decline, it bids fair very soon to be relegated to the shades of the past. The rage for sending Valentines probably had its culmination some ten years ago, since when it has steadily gone down; and now the festival is no longer observed by fashionable people, its lingering votaries being found only among the poorer classes. The following facts show how far the Post-office was called upon to do the messenger's part in delivering the love-missives of St Valentine when the business was in full swing. At the chief office in London on Valentine's Eve 1874, some 306 extra mail-bags, each 3 feet long by 2 feet wide, were required for the additional work thrown on the Post-office in connection with Valentines, and at every Post-office in the kingdom the staff was wont to regard St Valentine's Eve as the occasion of the year when its utmost energies were laid under requisition for the service of the public.