prize, she is a rival ten times more
dangerous than she was. Setting aside the wrong done to the sacredness
of the connubial relation, she now becomes the most subtle enemy to
the prospects of all the unmarried girls in her set. What is the bud
to the perfect rose? The timid, blushing maiden pales and subsides
before the married siren who has the audacity and charm of a conscious
intelligence. It is not without good reason that special balls and
parties have come into fashion for social buds; they are the
necessary sequence to the predominance of married sirens, with whom in
a mixed society no young girl can cope. They have the floor and the
partners; they monopolize all the attention, and their pleasure is of
the greatest importance. And their pleasure is to flirt--to flirt in
all places and at all hours.

In vain will some young aspirant to marriage display in the presence
of the married flirt her pretty accomplishments. She may sing her
songs, and play her mandolin never so sweetly, but the young men slip
away with some one or other of the piquant brides of the past year.
And in the privacy of the smoking-room it is the brides, and not the
young girls, who are talked about--what dresses they wear or are
likely to wear, how their hair is done, the history of the jewels
which adorn them, and the clever things they have said or implied.

Before we condemn too much the society girls of the time, we ought to
consider the new enemy who stands in the way of their advancement to
marriage. Is it not quite natural that the most courageous girls
should refuse the secondary place to which married flirts assign
them, and endeavor to meet these invaders with their own weapons? If
so, much of the forwardness of the present young girl is traceable to
the necessity forced upon her by these married competitors. For it is
a fact that young men go to the latter for advice and sympathy. They
tell them about the girls they like, and their fancies are nipped in
the bud. For the married flirt's first instinct is to divest all other
women of that air of romance with which the nobility and chivalry of
men have invested womanhood for centuries. So she points out with a
pitiless exactness all the small arts which other women use; and is
not only a rival to some young girl, but a traitor to her whole sex.

And yet she is not only tolerated but indulged. People giving
entertainments know that their success will be in a large measure
dependent