There were half-a-dozen of the girls together,--pretty creatures, in
the very first season of their long dresses,--the eldest not quite
sixteen. They were all braids and puffs and fluffy curls, all loops and
ruffles and ribbons, all smiles and dimples. It was the Saturday before
Valentine’s Day, in a certain year of grace, of which I will not give
you the precise date, but less than ten years ago, and more than five.
Of the half-dozen girls, two are busy teachers now, two are married,
one is playing mother to her brother’s little brood of orphan children,
and the sixth, not less happy than the rest, has gone on to “the next
country,” where they tell us she will never grow old, never be sick or
sorry any more,--happy Bertha, whom, surely, God loved.
But, that day in February, none of them thought much about the future:
the present was enough, with its fun and frolic, its wealth of all the
pleasures which girlhood holds dear. The six were passing the long
day together. Two of them were sisters and belonged in one house, and
the rest had come there to be with them; for they were all going to
make valentines. They had made funny ones and foolish ones, tender
ones, with just a little dash of satire in them, poetic ones and prosy
ones; and at last it was dinner-time, a feast of all the things that
school-girls love, and these were hungry girls. At least they were all
hungry girls but Nelly Hunt, and she scarcely ate any dinner at all,
she was so busy thinking. She was Bertha’s sister, and this was her
home and Bertha’s, and it was to the girls’ own room that the little
party went back again, after they had eaten and praised Mrs. Hunt’s
dinner.
“What are you thinking about, Nell?” Bertha asked, sitting on the arm
of Nelly’s chair.
“These valentines,” Nelly answered slowly.
“Well, surely they need not make you sober,--they are absurd enough.”
“Yes, and it’s just because they are so absurd that they make me sober.
I was wondering why we couldn’t just as well have said something to
help somebody--to make somebody think--to do some good.”
“Nelly’s heroics!” cried Kate Greene flippantly. “Miss Hunt as a moral
reformer!”
Nelly blushed from her pretty ears to the roots of her sunny hair; but
her eyes shone clear, and there was a ring of earnestness in her voice
as she answered,--
“You can laugh if you will, but I mean what I say, and I’m going to try
an experiment. I will write one boy a valentine, such as I think a girl
ought to write, and I’ll send it.”
“So you shall,” Bertha said gently,--Bertha always was peacemaker,--“and
we’ll all go away and see mamma and the baby while you write it. When
it’s done you must call us.”
“Yes, and you must show it to us,” cried Kate Greene, as she went away;
“that’s only fair. We promised this morning to show each other all we
sent, and we sha’n’t let you off.”
And then the five fluttered away like a flock of birds, and Nelly was
quite alone.
Her task was harder than she had imagined. It is only the old, perhaps,
who are sage in counsel by nature. At any rate, to give good advice
did not come naturally to pretty Nelly. But she had an idea of what
she wanted to say, and at last she got it said. She had written and
rewritten it, and finally concluded that she could do no better, and
then copied it out into her neatest handwriting before she called the
others. It was a little stiff, to be sure, and preachy and high-flown,
but it sounded like a lofty effort and a complete success to the
listening girls. This was what it said:--
“MY VALENTINE,--You will have plenty of fine speeches and praises,
and, perhaps, of fun and fancy from others, so I shall not give you
those,--I who have but one interest in you, namely, that you should be
the best boy and the best man which it is possible for you to become.
If you are selfish, if you are indolent, if you are mean, you will
never be happy in your own society, until you have sunk so low that
you don’t know the difference between goodness and badness. But if you
set out to be a gentleman and a man of honor and a faithful worker, you
will do good deeds and live a happy life, and be worthy the everlasting
esteem of