No matter who first puts them in words, if they come to a soul and fill
it, they belong to it,--whether they floated on the voice of others, or
on the wings of silence and the night.]
To be up with the fashion of the time, to be ignorant of plain things
and people, and to be knowing in brilliancies, is a kind of Pelhamism
that is very apt to overtake one in the first blush of manhood. To hold
a fair place in the after-dinner table-talk, to meet distinction as a
familiarity, to wear _salon_ honors with aplomb, to know affection so
far as to wield it into grace of language, are all splendid achievements
with a man of the world. Instruction is caught without asking it; and no
ignorance so shames as ignorance of those forms by which natural impulse
is subdued to the tone of civilian habit. You conceal what tells of the
man, and cover it with what smacks of the _roue_.
Perhaps under such training, and with a slight memory of early
mortification to point your spirit, you affect those gallantries of
heart and action which the world calls flirtation. You may study
brilliancies of speech to wrap their net around those susceptible hearts
whose habit is too _naive_ by nature to wear the leaden covering of
custom.
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