which gave us Cupid, the love element of loving your feet. And the earliest card of the week.
You may think that a set of "Fancy Dress Ball Costumes" would be boring, but the subjects are rather fun and much amusement may be gained from working out what the costume means, certainly a lot of thought has gone into them.
They also feature leading stage stars and beauties of the day and here we have Daisy Murdoch, very popular at the time, and what she was most known for was for playing Cupid. This was in a production of Orpheus and Euridice, staged by the Bijou Opera Company, and it travelled America in the mid 1880s. You can read more about her online at The Metropolitan Museum site where it also details how her image was used by other tobacco manufacturers.
Our cards, on which her name was spelt wrong, it was definitely MurdocH, not MurdocK, were lithographed by Knapp & Company of New York, and, to give cartophilists an extra thrill, a set was owned by Jefferson Burdick, who said it was one of his favourites.
Sadly he did not select a single card, so we must guess which one he liked best, without ever knowing if we were right....