Already, however, there is, especially in America and England, a superior class of women who, despising Coyness as crude, artificial, and silly, have adopted in its place a much more refined method of making men fall in love with them. In one word, they have substituted Flirtation for Coyness. As this statement will to many appear paradoxical, if not absurd, it is necessary first to distinguish between Flirtation and Coquetry before trying to justify it. _Flirtation and Coquetry._—These two words are so constantly confused by careless or ignorant writers that some girls are almost as much offended if accused of Flirtation as of Coquetry. It was bad enough for Winthrop to say that “A woman without coquetry is as insipid as a rose without scent, champagne without sparkle, or corned beef without mustard” (!), but there is no excuse whatever for “Ik Marvel’s” saying that “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.” No excuse, I say, because the dictionaries on our table tell us the very reverse. Flirtation, in Webster, is simply “playing at courtship,” without any cruel intentions; while Coquetry is an attempt “to attract admiration, and gain matrimonial offers, from a desire to gratify vanity, and with the intention to reject the suitor.” That this is the correct definition is shown beyond question by the adjectives which are commonly coupled with those nouns: a “harmless Flirtation,” a “heartless Coquette.” A Coquette seeks to fascinate for the sake of fascinating. Like a miser, she mistakes the means for the end, and feeds on one-sided passion and admiration, until one morning she wakes up and finds her beauty gone, and herself the most disappointed and unamiable of old maids. Or again, she might be compared to a bank clerk who refused his salary because he was satisfied with the tinkling of the money which he heard all day long. The Flirt, on the other hand, displays her accomplishments, her wit, and personal charms, for the sake of enlarging the facilities of Courtship, the possibilities of rational Choice. One reason why Flirtation and Coquetry are so apt to be confounded is because the English peoples alone have the word Flirtation—naturally enough, as they alone allow their young people the blessings of Courtship and rational choice promoted by it. Foreigners, not appreciating exactly what is meant by the word, are apt to translate it as Coquetry. One Frenchman, who has lived long in England, has tried to define Flirtation for his countrymen by saying it consisted of “attentions without intentions.” This definition was widely welcomed as very clever. Clever it may be, but it is a definition of Coquetry not of Flirtation. For Flirtation never excludes _possible_ intentions.