THE FLORAL ORACLE. 
“O’er the margin of the flood 
Plunk the daisy peeping; 
Through the covert of the wood 
Hunt the sorrel creeping; 
With the little celaudine 
Crown my love, my valentine! 
“ Pansies on their lowly stems 
Scattered o’er the fallows, 
Hazel-buds with crimson gems, 
Green and glossy sallows, 
Tufted moss and ivy twine, 
Heck my love, my valentine! 
“ Few and simple flow’rets these; 
Yet to me less glorious 
Garden-beds and orchard-trees! 
Since this wreath victorious 
Binds you now for ever mine, 
0 my love, my valentine 1” 
A very ancient custom in vogue on the eve 
of the anxiously-awaited Fourteenth of February 
is thus described in the almost forgotten “Con¬ 
noisseur “ Last Friday was Valentine’s Day, 
and the night previous I got five bay-leaves, and 
pinned four of them to the four corners of my 
pillows, and the fifth to the middle; and then, 
if I dreamt of my sweetheart, I was told that we 
should be married before the year was out.” _ 
In a fiction attributed to Hannah More, it is 
related that, among other superstitious practices 
of a certain Sally Evans, “ she would never go 
to bed on Midsummer-eve without sticking up 
in her room the well-known plant called mid - 
