Sweet Maid, Forget Me Not

"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.