Morning journal and courier., 1881-11-17
Price Four Cents.
Fltrfs,

From an English Book by E. c. Grenville MurrayI Most persons possess some good qualities know this and wish others to know it. The process of making them known to one's own sex may be characterized under various names while the endeavor to attT act the op- posite sex by them-and at the same time toying, as it were, with the passion of love constitutes Irritation.
 One can obtain the appreciation of one's own sex by doing ordinary duties we'll but to gain the good will of the other sex, who may not be in a position to judge of our genuine merits, requires a manner more or less artificial. Filtration is, therefore, a forced means of making ones self agreeable to person of the other sex. In the greater or less transparency of the artiice lies the science of flirting which has infinite shades, from unblushing coquetry to the most deli cate power of fascination. Society would be dull thing without this science. If it were possible that women should cease for short time to care what men thought about them, most of us, moralists or no, would be glad to see that short time ended.
 Men and women f1irt but women more than men; and they also show it more. Women are less able than men to live with out admiration, and have less other work in life than the labor of securing praise At the same time they cannot so well keep their firtations out of sight. A man travels and is in very few places really intimately known;
 
 closely watched. None of 8 mans friends know precisely with how many women he hifts; a woman'S friends keep an exact &C., count of the number of her admirers A man to be called f1irt must firt to the point of abandoning all other occupation; but very little affability, squandered under the form of smiles, procures the title for wo- man.
 A girl IS fiirt who exchanges a coy glance with middle aged, eligible bachelor who picks up glove she has dropped she is something worse than firt-a minx-if she makes herself pleasant to another girls be- trothed. The iron rule of modesty, winch men have imposed upon women as a protection against their wiles, leaves young women scarcely free to move or speak in the presence of the trousered sex with out risk of being thought forward :" but women themselves are much sterner in their definition of forwardness than men In fem mine judgment every girl or pretty young woman is forward, and, consequently, a 1irt, who monopolizes the attention of males in social circle. This she can do by being too modest, as well as by being not modest enough for her own sex will not account as modesty the grace which charms without at- tempting to do so. Men never speak so ill of the worst as women do of the best among their sex who have the art of pleasing. There are men whom all other men join in praising, but there has scarcely lived a woman, wife, virgin or saint-who has not had detractors among other women. Should there have been some few exceptions which prove this general rule, they will be found to have fourished in the ranks of the fearfully and unutterably ugly.
 Every woman has firted; but we are not concerned with the women whose innocent hirtations are but the gush of youthful spir- it's, or with those who owe the title of firt to the mere malignity of their own sex. The hirts of whom we propose to treat are those who firt of malice prepense. In these f1irt- ing is the art of sexual tantalization
 It may also be termed, less philosophically, ., the art of playing with fire and getting scorched more or less often. All firts burn themselves, once at least. Some squeal when they but singe their fnger-tips and retire straightway from the game with their eyes full of tears. These are third-class firts, having no real heart in the play. The recol- lection of their first smart makes them red- den and tinge till they become old women, when perhaps they smile and wish the burn could come over again. It was third-class firt who, on the strength of short and sharp acquaintance with the ways of the oth- CT sex, invented such sayings as "Man is perfdious"
 The second class firts get frequently burned without ever quite inuring themselves to the pain. They resemble dullish boys who play at football because they must but never surmount the fear of being skinned. Some- times the second class firt gives up playing and learns to laugh at her burns; more often she goes on till she can play no longer, and wearily sums up her experience of the sport as all burns and no pleasures"
 But the first-class f1irt cares not pin for scorches. She is the salamander who lives in the fire. Sparks fly round her and she revels in them she is all over scars and sur- veys them complacently as soldier does his wounds. Flirt from the nursery, firt in her teens, firt in her prime, she continues firt- ing when she is an old woman and firts on her death bed with the doctor. If she could come to life for moment in her coffin, she would firt with the undertaken. Commend us to this class of firt for making the heads of men flame like the tops of luciter matches. She sets quiet households afre; everything turns to finder on her passage, and when she is buried an odor of birthstone hovers over her tomb. Her old lovers would be afraid to lift up the grave slab that covers her lest they should see little blue-forked flames leap out diabolically.