ST. VALENTINE'S DAY. 
603 
holiday; Judge Benson gives an account of it. It was called 
Vrouwen-Dagh, or woman's day. "■' Every mother's daughter," 
says the Judge, " was furnished with a piece of cord, the size 
neither too large nor too small ; the twist neither too hard nor too 
loose ; a turn round the hand, and then a due length left to serve 
as a lash." On the morning of this Vrouwen-Dagh, the little girls 
— and some large ones, too, probably, for the fun of the thing — 
sallied out, armed with just such a cord, and every luckless wight 
of a lad that was met received three or four strokes from this 
feminine lash. It was not " considered fair to have a knot, but 
fair to practice a few days to acquire the sleight.'" The boys, of 
course, passed the day in a state of more anxiety than they now 
do under the auspices of St. Valentine ; " never venturing to turn 
a corner without first listening whether no warblers were behind 
it." One can imagine that there must have been some fun on 
the occasion, to the lookers-on especially ; but a strange custom 
it was. We have never heard of anything hke it elsewhere. The 
boys insisted that the next day should be theirs, and be called 
Mannen-Dagh, man's day, " but my masters were told the law 
would thereby defeat its own purpose, which was, that they 
should, at an age, and in a way most likely never to forget it, re- 
ceive the lesson of Manliness, never to strike. As the lesson has 
been well learnt by the stronger sex in this part of the world, it 
is quite as well, perhaps, that the custom should drop, and Vrou- 
wen-Dagh be forgotten. But after this, who shall say that our 
Dutch ancestors were not a chivalrous race ? 
Thursday, 15th. — Very cold. Still, bright day ; thermometer 
8° below zero this morning at sunrise. The evergreens feel this 
severe weather, especially the pines ; when near tliem, one ob- 
