dinate to her princess-like whims, inclinations and caprices, and
has had her way by smiles and cajoleries or sobs and tears, as the case
may be. She finds out at an early age that it is pleasanter and more
profitable to be petted and pampered than to be forced to shift for
herself. She learns that an easy little pitiful curve of her coral lips
and upward glance of her baby orbs is answered by certain manifestations
of tenderness and concern: thus she "makes eyes," flirts, as it were,
before she can talk, and studies the art of successful tyranny. The
nursery--in fact, the entire house--rejoices when she rejoices and
trembles when she weeps. She wants everything she sees, and sulks at any
superiority of circumstances in another; but then she sulks
bewitchingly. Wherever she goes she carries an imperious sway, and keeps
her foot well on the necks of her admirers.

The spoiled child blossoms into perfection as a young lady. That is her
destiny, and to the proper fulfilment of it her family and friends stand
ready to devote themselves. It may be they are a trifle weary of her
incalculable temper, that her fascinations have palled a little upon
them, and that her mysterious inability to put up with the lot of
every-day mortals and bear disagreeables contentedly has worn out their
patience. They want her to marry, and, without wasting any empty wishing
upon a result so certain to come, she wants to marry herself. She is not
likely to have unattainable ideals: what she demands is a continuation
of her petted existence--a lifelong adorer to minister to her vanity and
desires, to find her always beautiful, always precious, and to smooth
away the rough places of life for her.

Nothing can be more bewitching than she is on her entrance into society.
Nothing could seem more desirable to an admirer than the possession of
the beautiful creature, who, with her alternations of sweetness and
imperiousness, tenderness, and cruelty, stimulates his ardor and appears
more like a spirit of fire and dew than a real woman. It seems to him
the most delightful thing in the world when she confesses that she never
likes what she has, but always craves what she has not--that she hates
everything useful and prosaic and likes everything which people declare
she ought to renounce. She is unreasonable, and he loves her
unreason--it bewitches him: she is obstinate, and he loves to feel the
strength of her tiny will, as if it were the manifestation of s