delphians talked about families, or New Yorkers about bargains, or
Bostonians about books. A man who has not one absorbing aim can get a
great many miscellaneous things into each twenty-four hours; and there
was not a day in which Philip did not make himself agreeable and useful
to many people, receive many confidences, and give much good-humored
advice about matters of which he knew nothing. His friends' children
ran after him in the street, and he knew the pet theories and wines of
elderly gentlemen. He said that he won their hearts by remembering every
occurrence in their lives except their birthdays.

It was, perhaps, no drawback on the popularity of Philip Malbone that
he had been for some ten years reproached as a systematic flirt by all
women with whom he did not happen at the moment to be flirting. The
reproach was unjust; he had never done anything systematically in his
life; it was his temperament that flirted, not his will. He simply had
that most perilous of all seductive natures, in which the seducer is
himself seduced. With a personal refinement that almost amounted to
purity, he was constantly drifting into loves more profoundly perilous
than if they had belonged to a grosser man. Almost all women loved him,
because he loved almost all; he never had to assume an ardor, for he
always felt it. His heart was multivalve; he could love a dozen at once
in various modes and gradations, press a dozen hands in a day, gaze into
a dozen pair of eyes with unfeigned tenderness; while the last pair wept
for him, he was looking into the next. In truth, he loved to explore
those sweet depths; humanity is the highest thing to investigate,
he said, and the proper study of mankind is woman. Woman needs to be
studied while under the influence of emotion; let us therefore have
the emotions. This was the reason he gave to himself; but this refined
Mormonism of the heart was not based on reason, but on temperament and
habit. In such matters logic is only for the by-standers.

His very generosity harmed him, as all our good qualities may harm us
when linked with bad ones; he had so many excuses for doing kindnesses
to his friends, it was hard to quarrel with him if he did them too
tenderly. He was no more capable of unkindness than of constancy; and
so strongly did he fix the allegiance of those who loved him, that the
women to whom he had caused most anguish would still defend him when
accused; would have crossed the continent,