Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-03-04
10Th CENTURY FORMS
GRADUAL DECLINE OF THE COM
PLIMENT.
No Longer the Thing for Women to
Offer Undue Flat
terry.
Written for The Evening Star.

Written for The Evening Star.
Look, girls! Read and be properly i'm
pressed said the Notwithstanding girl,
laughingly holding out a sheet of note
paper.
"A sonnet to your eyes!" exclaimed one.
Wherein my whole world lies quoted
another, mirthfuIly. And the two bent
their heads to read on.
But if, mingling with their merriment
when they had finished, there was an i'm
piled question-Who-it was not answered.
No; the girl to today may laugh and
make merry over an old fashioned compli-
ment, a poetic effuSion from an admirer,
but she will never disclose his name. That
would be contrary to her principle-contrary
to the dictates of her feminine honor.
But just SO far out. of date is the old-time
compliment that it creates mirth when
dragged into life again. In Elizabethan
days woman lived for fiattery and compfi-
ments, and the lover who could not indite
sonnet to her charms was not worth so
much as a fieeting smile.
Ages ago, when woman sat high upon
pedestal, chivalrous knights danced around
her feet and looked up, vying with one an
other in pretty speeches. They likened her
unto an angel and a saint to compensate
her for the trying position she must hold
on the top of the column.
Whether she grew weary of her limited
territory, whether the incense fumes suffo-
Gated her, or whether from her own
woman'S curiosity she longed to feel real
firm ground beneath her, she has abandoned
the seat, and today stands face to face
with her contemporary, man, and looks MN
Squarely in the eyes.
And the woman of today, the intelligent,
thinking woman, does not receive the bare
Hot in hirh
years ago, to indulge. If she looks well
and a man openly and frankly tells her so,
she is pleased, for she is still woman.
But if he tells her that she is an anger,
that she has a divine light in her eyes, she
laughs, and he-if he has not realizd 1t be-
fore-knows she is right. She is not an
angel, and there is nothing divine In the
light in her eyes.
Ambiguous Now.
The compliment passed today is ambigu-
Gus; it is intended to be. 1t is subtle flat
terry and the woman who receives such
compliment feels honored. She realizes
that the man, respecting her lntellSence,
has offered her compliment he might not
give to every one; every woman would not
decipher it's meaning. 1t Is compliment
to her perspicacity-or she feels that 1t is
and she smiles the same smile she used to
send down from the PEDESTAL
In DeStOWlnS SuDtIe HdlteIy hiesa Oh LIS
himself against ridicule; if the woman
chooses to take it a compliment, If she
is a woman who will receive it, very well;
if she scorns fattery, he is safe-she does
not fathom it.
Compliments are passed between women
today: women in business, women in the
drawing room, pay one another sincere
condiments even though such a turn of
affairs in the feminine world has been
laughed at by men.
Mans greatest compliment to woman Is
to seek her companionship, give her his
confidence and ask her advice. That is the
true compliment of the twentieth century,
the sort woman seeks. But the old-tlme
fiattery has decayed-and some women sign
and regret it.