of the world. Instruction is caught without asking it; and no
ignorance so shames as ignorance of those forms by which natural impulse
is subdued to the tone of civilian habit. You conceal what tells of the
man, and cover it with what smacks of the _roue_.

Perhaps under such training, and with a slight memory of early
mortification to point your spirit, you affect those gallantries of
heart and action which the world calls flirtation. You may study
brilliancies of speech to wrap their net around those susceptible hearts
whose habit is too _naive_ by nature to wear the leaden covering of
custom. You win approaches by artful counterfeit of earnestness, and
dash away any _naivete_ of confidence with some brave sophism of the
world. A doubt or a distrust piques your pride, and makes attentions
wear a humility that wins anew. An indifference piques you more, and
throws into your art a counter-indifference,--lit up by bold flashes of
feeling,--sparkling with careless brilliancies, and crowned with a
triumph of neglect.

It is curious how ingeniously a man's vanity will frame apologies for
such action.--It is pleasant to give pleasure; you like to see a joyous
sparkle of the eye, whether lit up by your presence or by some buoyant
fancy. It is a beguiling task to weave words into some soft, melodious
flow, that shall keep the ear and kindle the eye; and to strew it over
with half-hidden praises, so deftly couched in double terms that their
aroma shall only come to the heart hours afterward, and seem to be the
merest accidents of truth. It is a happy art to make such subdued show
of emotion as seems to struggle with pride, and to flush the eye with a
moisture, of which you seem ashamed, and yet are proud. It is a pretty
practice to throw an earnestness into look and gesture, that shall seem
full of pleading, and yet--ask nothing!

And yet it is hard to admire greatly the reputation of that man who
builds his triumphs upon womanly weakness; that distinction is not
over-enduring whose chiefest merit springs out of the delusions of a too
trustful heart. The man, who wins it, wins only a poor sort of womanly
distinction. Without power to cope with men, he triumphs over the
weakness of the other sex only by hypocrisy. He wears none of the armor
of Romans, and he parleys with Punic faith.

----Yet even now there is a lurking goodness in you that traces its
beginning to the old garret-home,--there is an air in the harvest heats
t