the Christian maiden selling her white body for a score of tiny stones
and an empty title to tack before her name--all march, and fight, and

bleed, and die beneath its tawdry flag.
Ay, ay, vanity is truly the motive-power that moves humanity, and it

is flattery" target="_blank" title="n.奉承；谄媚的举动">flattery that greases the wheels. If you want to win affection and
respect in this world, you must flatter people. Flatter high and low,

and rich and poor, and silly and wise. You will get on famously.
Praise this man's virtues and that man's vices. Compliment everybody

upon everything, and especially upon what they haven't got. Admire
guys for their beauty, fools for their wit, and boors for their

breeding. Your discernment and intelligence will be extolled to the
skies.

Every one can be got over by flattery" target="_blank" title="n.奉承；谄媚的举动">flattery. The belted earl--"belted earl"
is the correct phrase, I believe. I don't know what it means, unless

it be an earl that wears a belt instead of braces. Some men do. I
don't like it myself. You have to keep the thing so tight for it to

be of any use, and that is uncomfortable. Anyhow, whatever particular
kind of an earl a belted earl may be, he is, I assert, get-overable by

flattery" target="_blank" title="n.奉承；谄媚的举动">flattery; just as every other human being is, from a duchess to a
cat's-meat man, from a plow boy to a poet--and the poet far easier

than the plowboy, for butter sinks better into wheaten bread than into
oaten cakes.

As for love, flattery" target="_blank" title="n.奉承；谄媚的举动">flattery is its very life-blood. Fill a person with love
for themselves, and what runs over will be your share, says a certain

witty and truthful Frenchman whose name I can't for the life of me
remember. (Confound it! I never can remember names when I want to.)

Tell a girl she is an angel, only more angelic than an angel; that she
is a goddess, only more graceful, queenly, and heavenly than the

average goddess; that she is more fairy-like than Titania, more
beautiful than Venus, more enchanting than Parthenope; more adorable,

lovely, and radiant, in short, than any other woman that ever did
live, does live, or could live, and you will make a very favorable

impression upon her trusting little heart. Sweet innocent! she will
believe every word you say. It is so easy to deceive a woman--in this

way.
Dear little souls, they hate flattery" target="_blank" title="n.奉承；谄媚的举动">flattery, so they tell you; and when you

say, "Ah, darling, it isn't flattery" target="_blank" title="n.奉承；谄媚的举动">flattery in your case, it's plain, sober
truth; you really are, without exaggeration, the most beautiful, the

most good, the most charming, the most divine, the most perfect human
creature that ever trod this earth," they will smile a quiet,

approving smile, and, leaning against your manly shoulder, murmur that
you are a dear good fellow after all.

By Jove! fancy a man trying to make love on strictlytruthful
principles, determining never to utter a word of mere compliment or

hyperbole, but to scrupulously confine himself to exact fact! Fancy
his gazing rapturously into his mistress' eyes and whispering softly

to her that she wasn't, on the whole, bad-looking, as girls went!
Fancy his holding up her little hand and assuring her that it was of a

light drab color shot with red; and telling her as he pressed her to
his heart that her nose, for a turned-up one, seemed rather pretty;

and that her eyes appeared to him, as far as he could judge, to be
quite up to the average standard of such things!

A nice chance he would stand against the man who would tell her that
her face was like a fresh blush rose, that her hair was a wandering

sunbeam imprisoned by her smiles, and her eyes like two evening stars.
There are various ways of flattering, and, of course, you must adapt

your style to your subject. Some people like it laid on with a
trowel, and this requires very little art. With sensible persons,

however, it needs to be done very delicately, and more by suggestion
than actual words. A good many like it wrapped up in the form of an

insult, as--"Oh, you are a perfect fool, you are. You would give your
last sixpence to the first hungry-looking beggar you met;" while

others will swallow it only when administered through the medium of a
third person, so that if C wishes to get at an A of this sort, he must

confide to A's particular friend B that he thinks A a splendid fellow,
and beg him, B, not to mention it, especially to A. Be careful that B

is a reliable man, though, otherwise he won't.
Those fine, sturdy John Bulls who "hate flattery" target="_blank" title="n.奉承；谄媚的举动">flattery, sir," "Never let

anybody get over me by flattery" target="_blank" title="n.奉承；谄媚的举动">flattery," etc., etc., are very simply managed.
Flatter them enough upon their absence of vanity, and you can do what

you like with them.
After all, vanity is as much a virtue as a vice. It is easy to recite

copy-book maxims against its sinfulness, but it is a passion that can
"move us to good as well as to evil. Ambition is only vanity

ennobled. We want to win praise and admiration--or fame as we prefer
to name it--and so we write great books, and paint grand pictures, and

sing sweet songs; and toil with willing hands in study, loom, and
laboratory.

We wish to become rich men, not in order to enjoy ease and
comfort--all that any one man can taste of those may be purchased

anywhere for 200 pounds per annum--but that our houses may be bigger
and more gaudily furnished than our neighbors'; that our horses and

servants may be more numerous; that we may dress our wives and
daughters in absurd but expensive clothes; and that we may give costly

dinners of which we ourselves individually do not eat a shilling's
worth. And to do this we aid the world's work with clear and busy

brain, spreadingcommerce among its peoples, carrying civilization to
its remotest corners.

Do not let us abuse vanity, therefore. Rather let us use it. Honor
itself is but the highest form of vanity. The instinct is not

confined solely to Beau Brummels and Dolly Vardens. There is the
vanity of the peacock and the vanity of the eagle. Snobs are vain.

But so, too, are heroes. Come, oh! my young brother bucks, let us be
vain together. Let us join hands and help each other to increase our

vanity. Let us be vain, not of our trousers and hair, but of brave
hearts and working hands, of truth, of purity, of nobility. Let us be

too vain to stoop to aught that is mean or base, too vain for petty
selfishness and little-minded envy, too vain to say an unkind word or

do an unkind act. Let us be vain of being single-hearted, upright
gentlemen in the midst of a world of knaves. Let us pride ourselves

upon thinking high thoughts, achieving great deeds, living good lives.
ON GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.

Not exactly the sort of thing for an idle fellow to think about, is
it? But outsiders, you know, often see most of the game; and sitting

in my arbor by the wayside, smoking my hookah of contentment and
eating the sweet lotus-leaves of indolence, I can look out musingly

upon the whirling throng that rolls and tumbles past me on the great
high-road of life.

Never-ending is the wild procession. Day and night you can hear the
quick tramp of the myriad feet--some running, some walking, some

halting and lame; but all hastening, all eager in the feverish race,
all straining life and limb and heart and soul to reach the

ever-receding horizon of success.
Mark them as they surge along--men and women, old and young, gentle

and simple, fair and foul, rich and poor, merry and sad--all hurrying,
bustling, scrambling. The strong pushing aside the weak, the cunning

creeping past the foolish; those behind elbowing those before; those
in front kicking, as they run, at those behind. Look close and see

the flitting show. Here is an old man panting for breath, and there a
timid maidendriven by a hard and sharp-faced matron; here is a

studious youth, reading "How to Get On in the World" and letting
everybody pass him as he stumbles along with his eyes on his book;

here is a bored-looking man, with a fashionably dressed woman jogging
his elbow; here a boy gazing wistfully back at the sunny village that

he never again will see; here, with a firm and easy step, strides a
broad-shouldered man; and here, with stealthy tread, a thin-faced,

stooping fellow dodges and shuffles upon his way; here, with gaze
fixed always on the ground, an artful rogue carefully works his way

from side to side of the road and thinks he is going forward; and here
a youth with a noble face stands, hesitating as he looks from the

distant goal to the mud beneath his feet.
And now into sight comes a fair girl, with her dainty face growing

more wrinkled at every step, and now a care-worn man, and now a
hopeful lad.

A motley throng--a motley throng! Prince and beggar, sinner and
saint, butcher and baker and candlestick maker, tinkers and tailors,

and plowboys and sailors--all jostling along together. Here the
counsel in his wig and gown, and here the old Jew clothes-man under

his dingy tiara; here the soldier in his scarlet, and here the