Sentiment Cards

"Though we should meet no more, / Sweet maid, forget me not." "Sentiment cards [are] small, single-sided cards printed with greetings or messages on morality [and] were popular in the United States during the nineteenth century," as Lauren B. Hewes explains in her discussion of Sentiment Cards on the American Antiquarian Society's Web site. "The tradition of trading or sending these early greeting cards began in Europe in the 1820s, and soon crossed the Atlantic to America....Some may have done double duty as calling cards or as rewards of merit for young children." These hand-tinted examples of sentiment cards (see three more below) predate the more colorful chromolithographed calling cards and rewards of merit that were popular in the 1880s and 1890s.

Love Like Mine Can Never Die A blight may come upon thy name, And want and suffering dim thine eye, But thou wilt find me still the same, For love like mine can never die. W. B. Farrah

Try Again. 'Tis a lesson you should heed, Try again, try again; If at first you don't succeed, Try again; Then your courage should appear, If you will but perservere, You will conquer, never fear, Try again, try again. Handwritten on the back of the card: "Loren & Persnelia Wright."

"Aim Straight. A. Lanborn." Cupid is aiming straight for the heart in the illustration on this nineteenth-century sentiment card .