His pretty speeches would amuse her for a little while, but the man who flatters her nowadays must be a more expert artist to escape the mortal wound of her ridicule. In a later day compliment undoubtedly became more of an art, and the dude of the Directoire, whom you might have found in the quaint drawing-rooms of old Boston, or Philadelphia, or Georgetown, as well as upon his native soil, was an ingratiating gallant in many ways. He posed, because Napoleon was making it the fashion to pose, but he posed well, and he studied the best methods of saying caressing things without making them nauseatingly sweet. This art of compliment, of not saying the right thing to the wrong woman, nor the wrong thing to any woman, reached an interesting point of development in the contemporaries of Beau Brummel. Possibly Miss America would have liked a Beau Brummel in an artistic spirit, and Brummel had, as a spectacle, many traits of gracefulness and fascination. Her elusiveness would have piqued him and his not too grovelling deference would have made her think him an entertaining fellow. His dress was elegant without effeminacy, his hat was the most extraordinary yet devised by the ingenuity of man--which itself should be a bond of sympathy. But hats pass away, and beaux melt among the hazy images in the tapestry of time. [Illustration] Yet they are always with us. Every age has blamed its beaux for wanting the true gallantry of beaux in the past. We all have heard Miss America say, rather petulantly, that the days of chivalry are gone. Perhaps they are; perhaps our men give too little attention to the graces of life. But let us hope that the modern man is not always as satire paints him, that for the little shams of chivalry he has substituted some real essence of an even deeper homage. And we must not forget, in considering courtship, that she, too, though she may not have greatly changed in fact, has produced an effect quite as puzzling as the change in man. One of the German painters, possibly under the influence of Sudermann, has shown the modern girl, assisted, and possibly instigated by Cupid, paring hearts with a knife. But this is an old partnership--Cupid & Co., Limited. I cannot say what sign the firm puts up over the door in Germany. In this country it certainly should read: “Hearts extracted without pain.” [Illustration]