Cattle wade peacefully at a riverside ford while a bonneted milkmaid leans on a wooden gate in afternoon light — this richly printed chromolithographic pastoral, titled "The Milk Maid," evokes the golden age of English rural genre painting and was dispatched from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on a crisp day in 1906, addressed in elegant copperplate hand to Miss Nellie at 313 Cass Street in Trenton, New Jersey. The card's painterly style, warm palette of amber, russet, and sage, and undivided-style address side (note the early "This Side for the Address" text) place it squarely in the flourishing pre-linen postcard golden age, when reproductions of pastoral paintings were among the most widely collected card subjects. Though no message was written, the card's pristine artistic image and bold machine-cancel postmark from Philadelphia make it an attractive period piece for collectors of agricultural Americana and Edwardian art cards.