For Young Ladies.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 8, 20 February 1902, Page 1

For Young Ladies.

In the workaday world the real experience of life begins where in fiction it usually ends —with the tying of the marriageknot. Some writer said of a youthful pair that they wooed in poetry, and after marriage lived in prose. That is just it: after the gilded romance come the hard and prosy realities of life, and they are often a bitter disillusion. One not infrequent phase in * the wooing o't' has been made the subject of a very readable reply by the wise and witty writer who conducts the 1 Information Bureau' in our esteemed contemporary the Austral Light. He deals with the imprudence, sinfulness, and danger of the not unusual habit of flirting, and shows, in effect, How mirth can into folly glide, And folly into sin. 'The dictionaries,' says he, 'define a flirt as "one who trifles with love " —one who seeks to win the admiration and affection of many, from a motive of vanity, or for her own entertainment, while leading them separately to believe that she reciprocates their affection. The word comes from the Anglo-Saxon, fieardian, to trifle,

which, significantly enough, is a formative from fieard—a. foolish thing. So that it seems strange that "S " should see ndthing wrong in flirting, and should write about it in so light a vein. A flirt is, first of all, a deceiver, for she simulates an affection she does not feel. Where this deception becomes habitual, it destroys all the natural charm of manner attaching to the simple and sincere. It warps the character, and numbs the conscience. There is a conventional unreality about all modern life, and especially about latter-day conversation. With the flirt, nothing is real except her own unreality.' * 'In the next place (he continues), she plays a dangerous game. For the virtuous Catholic girl, her best protection is the veil of modesty and maidenly reserve. The flirt scoffs at this, which she considers the outer wrappings of the prude. She is the moth playing with the candle-flame. Her wings are singed already, and there is worse ahead. She will sometime discover, but not just yet, that she may not touch pitch and still remain undefiled. There may be, and no doubt are, cases where girls play the coquette as an assertion of freedom from the restrictions imposed upon them in their earlier teens, or through the contagion of an example which is far too general, or as a mode of entertaining themselves, which looks both innocent and fascinating ; but it is scarcely too much to say that it is impossible to do so for any length of time without losing at least purity of the heart. Young men who are matrimonially intent, are usually well aware of this, and though often preferring a flirt for their amusement, look for a wife in the ranks of the modest and discreet. So that every locality is possessed of some ancient flirts who, having played the coquette for a quarter of a century, all the time putting back the clock of age and smoothing the wrinkles of time, are at last left high and dry on the sand. " The barque is still there, but the waters are gone." ' Lastly, the flirt " plays with love." Affection is the noblest gift at the disposal of man. He cannot give more to the Deity. The false assurances or protestations of a flirt introduce a debased currency, which brings love itself under suspicion, if not into disrepute. Those who are habitually insincere lose all veneration for truth, and with difficulty credit others with the possession of it. Those who toy with love are seldom capable of deep and lasting affection, and are unworthy, because unappreciative of, another's whole-hearted affection.'