How did Blanche Respond in 1910?

Long before dating became a digital parade of photos to which you swipe right or swipe left, ardent suitors employed artful probes of one another’s interest or affection.

Sometime around 1910, Blanche Copeland of Columbia received a postcard from George Mann.

The card was covered with an array of colored bows, each of which had a rhyming couplet to describe its meaning.

The recipient, Blanche, was invited to detach and return the bow expressive of her feelings.

(We met Blanche Copeland twice before; she received a pair of art postcards illustrating a courtship among shepherds in the mountains.)

This postcard was fixed into an album with brackets that covered the corners.

It is likely that the missing bows were detached by friction.

But we cannot be sure.

Did Blanche send back the bow of pink to let George know she was thinking of him?

Or, did she send back the black bow to announce that she was attached to someone else?

I thought that this was a preposterous way to engage in courtship, but softened when I saw George’s plaintive inscription on the reverse, “I love you”.

A genealogist confirms that Blanche Copeland married George Washington Mann, station manager, around 1911.