—What a tender, delicate, loving wife—mused I—such flashing, flaming flirt must in the end make; the prostitute of fashion; the bauble of fifty hearts idle as hers; the shifting make-piece of a stage scene; the actress, now in peasant, and now in princely petticoats! How it would cheer an honest soul to call her—his! What a culmination of his heart-life; what a rich dreamland to be realized! —Bah! and I thrust the poker into the clotted mass of fading coal—just such, and so worthless is the used heart of a city flirt; just so the incessant sparkle of her life, and frittering passions, fuses all that is sound and combustible into black, sooty, shapeless residuum. When I marry a flirt, I will buy second-hand clothes of the Jews. —Still—mused I—as the flame danced again—there is a distinction between coquetry and flirtation. A coquette sparkles, but it is more the sparkle of a harmless and pretty vanity than of calculation. It is the play of humors in the blood, and not the play of purpose at the heart. It will flicker around a true soul like the blaze around an _omelette au rhum_, leaving the kernel sounder and warmer. Coquetry, with all its pranks and teasings, makes the spice to your dinner—the mulled wine to your supper. It will drive you to desperation, only to bring you back hotter to the fray. Who would boast a victory that cost no strategy, and no careful disposition of the forces? Who would bulletin such success as my Uncle Toby’s, in the back garden, with only the Corporal Trim for assailant? But let a man be very sure that the city is worth the siege! Coquetry whets the appetite; flirtation depraves it. Coquetry is the thorn that guards the rose—easily trimmed off when once plucked. Flirtation is like the slime on water plants, making them hard to handle, and when caught, only to be cherished in slimy waters. And so, with my eye clinging to the flickering blaze, I see in my reverie, a bright one dancing before me, with sparkling, coquettish smile, teasing me with the prettiest graces in the world—and I grow maddened between hope and fear, and still watch with my whole soul in my eyes; and see her features by and by relax to pity, as a gleam of sensibility comes stealing over her spirit—and then to a kindly, feeling regard: presently she approaches—a coy and doubtful approach—and throws back the ringlets that lie over her cheek, and lays her hand—a little bit of white hand—timidly upon my strong fingers—and turns her head daintily to one side—and looks up in my eyes as they rest on the playing blaze; and my fingers close fast and passionately over that little hand like a swift night-cloud shrouding the pale tips of Dian—and my eyes draw nearer and nearer to those blue, laughing, pitying, teasing eyes, and my arm clasps round that shadowy form—and my lips feel a warm breath—growing warmer and warmer— Just here the maid comes in, throws upon the fire a panful of anthracite, and my sparkling sea-coal reverie is ended.