 | FLIRTING Saratoga in 1901 |  |
FLIRTING
The following letter from a young lady is full of suggestions.
It comes written in a patrician hand. The writing is graceful,
sweeping, and dashy. It tells the story so truly, and teaches a
moral so keenly, that I cannot resist giving it to you.
Miss Mollie Brown, of Forty-sixth street, writes:
I wish to ask your sympathy and advice on a subject that has
long been weighing on my mind, and that is—flirting.
You see I have got the name of being that despicable thing—
a flirt—simply because I look after my own interests. Par
example: I am pretty—every one says so—and have plenty of
admirers. Well, so soon as a young gentleman, whom I like
pretty well, calls on me two or three times, I am brought up for
examination before my paternal.
“Who is he?” my relative sternly inquires.
“Mr. Smith, papa,” I meekly respond, telling in ten words all
I know about the man.
“Where does he live? What's his father's name? What's
his business? How much does he make a year? What are his
habits?” follow each other in quick succession, and, not being
able to answer, I steadily set to work to discover these important
facts, my father never thinking of doing it for me.
Well, in two months, by continual pumping I discover his
place of abode—quite stylish!
In three months I discover his father's name—John.
In four his business—small broker in Wall street.
In five, income—uncertain.
In six, habits ditto!!
Now, what is left for me to do? I have wasted three months
finding out that it would be very foolish for me to marry Smith.
I can't help it—I tried hard; but in a big city like this, it is hard to
find out about anybody, so I can do nothing but give the case of
Smith up, and try again. Of course I've treated Mr. Smith
kindly, because he looked like a solid fellow, and I didn't like to
lose a good opportunity.
Now, it happens that, having tried to look out for myself in
this way some dozen times or so, I have drawn down on my
devoted head the opprobrious epithet of—Flirt—and as a natural
consequence, all your “Brown's boys,” thinking me fair game for
a flirtation, are overwhelming me with their detrimental
attentions, to the disgust of all the eligibles.
Now, dear Mr. Perkins, can't you advise me on this subject,
or at least make Mrs. Grundy retract the unenviable name she
has bestowed upon me?
My only desire is to pursue my own way peacefully, and,
before I die, marry some well-educated young man with a good
family, good business, good habits, good income, good-looking,
and good-natured enough to make me love him; and surely no
girl could ask less, could they?
Forty-sixth street, March 17.
No, Miss Mollie—no! your experience I believe to be the
experience of almost every pretty young lady from Madison
square to the Park. The mission of an accomplished young
lady is to marry a brave young fellow with money enough to
support her, and love enough in his big, generous heart to make
her happy.
You are not a “flirt.” You simply show a little management.
You are doing simply what your big brother and shrewd father
ought to do for you—guarding against being deceived. You
don't want to wreck your young life by marrying a man whose
life is purposeless, and who is penniless, reckless, and heartless?
“What is to be done?”
Why, there should be confidential relations between you and
your father. I don't mean that he should be an old pepper-andsalt
dromedary, who drives blooded fellows away by boring them
to death with business questions the first night they call; but as
soon as Mr. Smith shows the least speck of devotion, you should
go right and tell your father, and he in a gentle and Chesterfieldian
manner should make a quiet inquiry about Smith
aforesaid. Finding Smith one of Brown's boys, he should tell
you so, and the next time he called you could be out; while if
Smith was found to be a plucky, and aspiring young fellow, your
papa could say that, and leave the rest to you and Smith
aforesaid.
“What is flirting, anyway?”
It is simply making yourself agreeable. It is a compliment
to be called a flirt. I never knew a flirt who wasn't pretty,
accomplished, and whose heart, when once caught, wasn't big
enough and warm enough to make a man worship her all his life.
Such being the case, of course she was fixed out with velvet
walking dresses, camel's hairs, six-button gloves, and boxes at
the opera for the rest of her natural existence.
If you call it flirting to become engaged to a fellow and then
break such engagement, and with it an honest man's heart, after
bouquets, I don't. If you call it flirting for a scamp to absorb a
year of a young lady's life, to steal her confiding kisses of
betrothed maidenhood, and then break an engagement and a
confiding heart—if you call that flirting, I don't. I call such
things criminal, and a man ought to be put in the Tombs for
doing it, just the same as he ought to be put in the Tombs for
any other swindling confidence game.
Flirting in the New York sense is when a young lady makes
herself agreeable, and consequently has lots of admirers, whom
she keeps “on a string” until she makes up her mind which one
she loves best, and which one has the biggest and bravest heart.
Flirting with blooded New York fellows is when a young fellow
with a heart full of splendid boyishness loves all the pretty girls
on the street, until, by-and-by, some sweet angel captures him,
head, heart, Russian overcoat, and the thousand little flirting
loves are concentrated through the focus of honest love upon the
new object of his adoration. And there they both stand, Mollie
Brown! both caught, both true and together—one spirit, they
travel down the happy highway of life!
| FLIRTING Saratoga in 1901 | |