Valentine's Day in Butte, 1903

The text reads:

For centuries, there has been a superstition connected with the 14th of February, and it has long been regarded as a fitting and propitious time for choosing valentines for loving friends. Just what connection it has with the memory of good old St. Valentine is not clear, but the custom has been handed down from the storied past and it is observed to-day, though in a modified form. Wheatly in his “Illustration of the Common Prayer” says that St. Valentine “was a man of most admirable parts, and so famous for his love and charity that the custom of choosing valentines upon his festival took its rise from thence.”  In England, Scotland and France the day was celebrated by a company placing the names of maids and bachelors written on pieces of paper into a receptacle and then drawing them lotterywise. This practice attained a high degree of popularity in the fifteenth century, but later fell into disuse for some cause. Nowadays St. Valentine’s day is observed by sending to one’s friend decorated cards with mottoes or verses written theron.

—Anaconda Standard, Feb. 8, 1903. Art by J.C. Terry, staff artist.