From the Australian Home Companion and Band of Hope Journal, 26 February 1859

...when I call to mind my ramble along George-street on Saturday, the 12th instant, and think of the pictorial abominations I saw in once decently adorned shop windows...when scurrilous verses, contemptible doggerel, immoral allusions, and uncharitable insinuations revive in memory, I feel like one who has lost a loved resting place: like a man who shall never see his favourite tree again; like a disconsolate bird whose nest has been rifled—whose retreat has been ruthlessly destroyed. In no former year have I witnessed in Sydney such hideous perversions of all notions of true taste—of all sentiments of pure morality—in respect of valentines. And how numerous has been their exhibition too! In thoroughfares and bye-lanes—in fashionable streets and back-slums—in embrowned Balmain and rocky Pyrmont—among the sinuosities of that wonderful conglomeration of shanties, called the Glebe—in every street of Woolloomooloo, and out to aristocratic Paddington—have shop windows flared with these monster productions. They have outraged taste—offended purity—mocked decency—and disgraced Sydney, in every part thereof. [‘The Valentine Mania’ by Everard Evergree, The Younger, gentleman. [In The Australian Home Companion and Band of Hope Journal, 26 February 1859]