[ Samuel Carter Hall and his wife: their fifty-fourth wedding anniversary. ] Printed keepsake poem by Hall titled '54! | Anniversary', with autograph signatures 'S. C. Hall.' and 'Anna Maria Hall'.

Printed in lilac on one side of a 12 x 8,5 cm piece of thin card, with serated edges and rounded corners, and with glue staining to one edge and on blank reverse. The card is embossed with tiny stars, with decorative edges and the text enclosed within an oval border, with the autograph signatures above one another in a rectangular box beneath it. The twelve-line poem (signed in type 'S. C. HALL.') might be viewed as an example of Victorian sentimentality, but one should bear in mind the childless couple and Mrs Hall's failed pregnancies, the fact that her mother lived with them throughout their marriage, and their great benevolence. The poem begins: 'Yes! we go gently down the hill of life, | And thank our God at every step we go: | The husband-lover and the sweetheart-wife. | Of creeping age what do we care or know?' Concludes: 'These fading faculties are sent to say | Heaven is more near to-day than yesterday.' The poem was published in 1878 in the Literary World.