DECLINE OF A FINE ART.

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 157, 31 December 1898, Page 4 (Supplement)

DECLINE OF A FINE ART.

Flattery as a fine art is (says a writer m The Lady) a thing of the past. Flattery, like strong perfume, requires to be used sparingly, or as the delicate flavouring of some choice viand, agreeable to the taste, merely as a soupcon." The perfection of flattery is to have been flattered but not to know it. A woman accepts a 'certain amount of flattei/ as a homage to i her charms, but she resents fulsome compliments as insincere and meaningless. Of 'course, there are women who delight in 'gilded phrases and honeyed words, knowing them to be but false coin after all, but women in general are not so easily pleased, and the flattfrer must not overstep the mark. But now for the other side of the question. Are men equally susceptible to flattery? Verily they are, as much and more so, and women are themselves the best of flatterers ! Who has not seen some 'ardent youth fascinated, cajoled, and flattered by some clever woman, who knows just how to keep him at her side, listening to his hopes and fears, drawing out his aspirations, accepting his scribbled | rhymes, and implying that he has a future before him? Or a rich old bachelor, his dull, prosy tales listened to by some younger woman, whoso cleverly assumed air of interest leads him on to giddy heights of self-satisfaction? Men are as vain in their way as women — they lovt to be worshipped and adored. How often we see some man of mediocre talent flattered by his women-folk into thinking himself a god amongst men! They applaud his feeble jokes; they listen with deferential interest to his discussions of the topics of the day, and defer to his opinion ; and he suns himself in the flattery of his own fireside — elated and content!