The Colonial age was the day of elaborate compliment. Gentlemen took time to turn their sentences and polish them neatly, and ladies heard them to the end without suggesting by a word or glance that the climax had been foreseen for the last five minutes, at least. An essay on _Woman_, by a certain Mr. Thomas, had a great vogue in the eighteenth century, and antedated Tupper's Poems as a well of sentimental quotation. _The Spectator_ and _The Tattler_ gave the tone to society literature, and enabled the provincial dame to reflect accurately the Lady Betty Modish of London. The beaux, too, took many a leaf from _The Spectator_ in the study of a compliment. When I read of the Colonial maiden poring over the tiny glaze-paper note accompanying a book entitled "The Art of Loving"--in which the writer declares it to be "most convenient, presenting the _art of Loving_ to one who so fully possesses the _art of Pleasing_"--I am carried back to the days of Sir Charles Grandison. There is a marked contrast in the social chronicles of the eighteenth century at home and abroad, between what the gentlemen said _to_ the ladies and what they said _about_ them. That wicked Colonel Byrd, for instance, after making himself agreeable to Governor Spotswood's ladies the whole evening, writes in his journal that their conversation was "like whip sillabub--very pretty, but with nothing in it." Again he describes himself patronizingly as "prattling with the ladies after a nine o'clock supper." Yet, underneath all the superficial bowing and scraping of courtesy and compliment, and the jesting asides at the expense of the fair sex, it must be set down to the Cavalier's credit that he treated womankind with a great tenderness and respect. Woman's influence made itself felt in private and in public--in the Council, in the Virginia House of Burgesses, and in the Assemblies of Maryland and of Carolina. The pride and folly of Governor Tryon of Carolina led him to make a demand on the Assembly for an extensive appropriation for the building of a palace at Newbern suitable for the residence of a royal Governor. To obtain this appropriation, Lady Tryon and her sister, the beautiful Esther Wake, used all their blandishments. Lady Tryon gave brilliant balls and dinners, and her sister's bright eyes rained influence to such good purpose, that the first appropriation and as much more was granted, and the palace was pronounced the most magnificent structure in America. The palace is fallen--its marble mantels, its colonnades, its carved staircases are in ruins; but the name of beautiful Esther Wake is preserved in Wake County.