When he is sober he is going to have his eyes operated on at New York, and when he is drunk he is going to have them attended to in San Francisco. This gives the general appearance of insincerity to his remarks, and the merciless public yearns for him to pack his night shirt, like the Arabs and silently steal away. THOUGHTS OF THE MELLOW PREVIOUSLY. |It is the evening of St. Valentine's Day, and I am thinking of the long ago. St. Valentine's Day is nothing now but a blessed memory. Another landmark has been left behind in our onward march toward the great hereafter. We come upon the earth, battle a little while with its joy? and its griefs, and then we pass away to give place to other actors on the mighty stage. Only a few short years ago what an era St. Valentine's Day was to me. [Illustration: 8217] Now I still get valentines, but they are different and they affect me differently. They are not of so high an order of merit artistically, and the poetry is more impudent and less on the turtle-dove order. Some may be neglected on St. Valentine's Day, but I am not. I never go away by myself and get mad because I have been overlooked. I generally get valentines enough to paper a large hall. I file them away carefully and sell them back to the dealer for next year. Then the following St. Valentine's Day I love to look at the familiar features of those I have received in the years agone. One of these blessed valentines I have learned to love as I do my life. I received it first in 1870. It represents a newspaper reporter with a nose on him like the woman's suffrage movement. It is a large, enthusiastic nose of a bright bay color, with bias folds of the same, shirred with dregs of wine. How well I know that nose. The reporter is represented in tight green pants and orange coat. The vest is scarlet and the necktie is maroon, shot with old gold. The picture represents the young journalist as a little bit disposed to be brainy. The intellect is large and abnormally prominent. It hangs out over the deep-set eyes like the minority juror on the average panel. I can not help contrasting this dazzling five-cent valentine with the delicate little poem in pale blue and Torchon lace which I received in the days of yore from the redheaded girl with the wart on her thumb. With little of genuine pleasure have fame and fortune to offer us compared with that of sitting behind the same school desk with the Bismarck blonde of the school and with her alternately masticating the same hunk of spruce gum!