are a
dear good fellow after all.

By Jove! fancy a man trying to make love on strictly truthful
principles, determining never to utter a word of mere compliment or
hyperbole, but to scrupulously confine himself to exact fact! Fancy his
gazing rapturously into his mistress' eyes and whispering softly to her
that she wasn't, on the whole, bad-looking, as girls went! Fancy his
holding up her little hand and assuring her that it was of a light drab
color shot with red; and telling her as he pressed her to his heart that
her nose, for a turned-up one, seemed rather pretty; and that her eyes
appeared to him, as far as he could judge, to be quite up to the average
standard of such things!

A nice chance he would stand against the man who would tell her that her
face was like a fresh blush rose, that her hair was a wandering sunbeam
imprisoned by her smiles, and her eyes like two evening stars.

There are various ways of flattering, and, of course, you must adapt
your style to your subject. Some people like it laid on with a trowel,
and this requires very little art. With sensible persons, however, it
needs to be done very delicately, and more by suggestion than actual
words. A good many like it wrapped up in the form of an insult, as--"Oh,
you are a perfect fool, you are. You would give your last sixpence to
the first hungry-looking beggar you met;" while others will swallow it
only when administered through the medium of a third person, so that if
C wishes to get at an A of this sort, he must confide to A's particular
friend B that he thinks A a splendid fellow, and beg him, B, not to
mention it, especially to A. Be careful that B is a reliable man,
though, otherwise he won't.

Those fine, sturdy John Bulls who "hate flattery, sir," "Never let
anybody get over me by flattery," etc., etc., are very simply managed.
Flatter them enough upon their absence of vanity, and you can do what
you like with them.

After all, vanity is as much a virtue as a vice. It is easy to recite
copy-book maxims against its sinfulness, but it is a passion that can
move us to good as well as to evil. Ambition is only vanity ennobled. We
want to win praise and admiration--or fame as we prefer to name it--and
so we write great books, and paint grand pictures, and sing sweet songs;
and toil with willing hands in study, loom, and laboratory.

We wish to become rich men, not in order to enjoy ease and comfort--all
that any one man can taste of tho