Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings.

Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors; and instead of
the crosier, the mystical arrow is borne before thee.

In other words, this is the day on which those charming little
missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and intercross each other at every
street and turning. The weary and all forspent twopenny postman sinks
beneath a load of delicate embarrassments, not his own. It is scarcely
credible to what an extent this ephemeral courtship is carried on in
this loving town, to the great enrichment of porters, and detriment
of knockers and bell-wires. In these little visual interpretations,
no emblem is so common as the _heart_,--that little three-cornered
exponent of all our hopes and fears,--the bestuck and bleeding heart;
it is twisted and tortured into more allegories and affectations
than an opera hat. What authority we have in history or mythology
for placing the head-quarters and metropolis of God Cupid in this
anatomical seat rather than in any other, is not very clear; but we
have got it, and it will serve as well as any other. Else we might
easily imagine, upon some other system which might have prevailed
for any thing which our pathology knows to the contrary, a lover
addressing his mistress, in perfect simplicity of feeling, "Madam,
my _liver_ and fortune are entirely at your disposal;" or putting
a delicate question, "Amanda, have you a _midriff_ to bestow?" But
custom has settled these things, and awarded the seat of sentiment to
the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortunate neighbours wait at
animal and anatomical distance.

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds,
exceed in interest a _knock at the door_. It "gives a very echo to