Three bold red carnations burst from a gilded bronze ground on this richly embossed Edwardian New Year greeting, carrying a jovial verse: "Here's a toast to every year that's gone, / And one to each that's coming, / And may you have glad years enough, / To set our heads a-humming!" — the kind of exuberant rhyme that belonged equally to a farmhouse parlor and a saloon. Mailed September 12, 1905 from Wyandotte, California — a tiny Plumas County mountain community — to a Mr. Lee Maurer at Spanish Ranch, also in Plumas County, this card traveled only a short distance through rugged northern Sierra Nevada terrain. The writer, cramming every available millimeter of the communication space with ink, mentions that "the girls are jealous" and references someone who "had been crying three weeks" — a tantalizing domestic drama frozen in cursive. The 1-cent Louisiana Purchase Exposition stamp (Scott #323) adds philatelic interest, issued just the year prior for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.