What shall I write about? A sensible question enough for me to address to you, good reader, were I a worn-out school-girl, with a mind quite like an "exhausted receiver" on the one subject, frightful, dismal, and hated at all times to _her_. But, thanks be to Time, I am _no_ school-girl--and it is rather a foolish question, this same one I have proposed, considering that for sixty long seconds my mind has been fully determined as to _what_ I will write about this morning. I have been looking over a file of old magazines, which are now scattered about me in most beautiful confusion, for the sole purpose of discovering in the steps of _how many_ "illustrious predecessors" I am to follow, when I expatiate on that, which, by the last tale in the last new magazine, seems to be still a marvelous object in creation, namely, "_The Coquette_." And oh the poems, and tales, and essays, by the Mrs.'s and Misses--the Mr.'s and Esqr.'s, let alone the Dr.'s and Rev.'s, who have not disdained to pour forth their thoughts like water on this exhausted (?) topic! I will spare you, through mere Christian charity, dear reader, from listening to their enumeration. By this time, if you are any thing of a magazine or newspaper reader, you must _necessarily_ have arrived at some conclusion as to this tribe of humans. Well, what do you think of coquettes _in general_, my friend--what do you think of those with whom you have had to do with _in particular_? According to Johnson, a coquette is "a gay, airy girl, who by various _arts_ endeavors to gain admirers." Natural enough, all that, _I_ should say. When women are blessed (?) by a kind Providence with beauty, does it not follow rapidly on the heels of the truth, that they are meant and made to be admired, and loved, and wooed by the gender masculine? And when the admiration and homage of men's hearts are offered at the shrine of beauty--and the favored fair one tastes the cup of adulation man _forces_ to her lips, say, ye wise ones! is there any thing so very _unnatural_ in the fact that her human heart cries "more?" Why, even that poor, miserable daughter of the horse-leech was not content with saying "give!" once, it must needs be "give--_give_!" Now, in all fairness, I put the question to you--what warrior, after a brilliant achievement in _one_ battle--after one glorious conquest over his foes, was content ever after to dwell in a quiet obscurity, and suffer his name to be at last almost forgotten by men, because of his very inaction? Tell me, was that shining light so often lit and re-lit on the Mountain of Warning for the benefit of the sojourners in the vallies of the world--I mean Napoleon Bonaparte? Was Cortes? Was Alexander?