My incorporation was an event.  Business at once set in, and, with slight fluctuations, has continued ever since brisk and healthful.  The venture has been a decided success.  The constant, untiring skill of mamma, and the valuable experience of each gay season has enabled me to frequently increase the capital stock.  For my face is more pretty than it was four years ago, and my manners are more easy and pleasing.  Mamma says manners are every thing—­and they are a great deal.  I have grown to be somewhat of a woman of the world.  I have met so many new people—­strangers from all parts of the earth!  I have been every where, and done so much.  There is nothing local about me!  Some people say that I am all things to all men; perhaps I am, for if I am not broad I am not any thing.  I abhor narrow-mindedness!  I am a trifle fraudulent in a harmless way, which I am free to confess is more than a trifle fascinating to most of the men I know.  I smile, make eyes, sometimes sigh, and with many devices coax the masculine fancy into life, and for my sake.  Yet, withal, I am said to be conscientious—­very, in fact, and never intentionally deceive.  My reputation is better, alas! than I deserve.  My network is invisible but effectual; my weaving-power artless, but it is the art concealing the artful.

I am a Private Corporation!  Therefore, I own all the stock.  I constantly make loans, but I never sell.  The collateral—­either the many shades of love or the subtle changes of friendship—­must be A No. 1 in every respect.  It is collateral, not indorsements which I require.  Paper not able to sustain itself is not considered worth much in my Banking-House (social).

It is my sweet expectation to retire from business whenever I chance to find—­or rather when I am found—­by the right purchaser.  I often long for that time; I often picture to myself the undoubted delights of a domestic life, and—­but in the meantime I carry on a carefully perfected system of

  =Flirting for Revenue Only.=

That is my long-chosen motto, from which I do not depart.  A Private Corporation must have protection!  Self-preservation is the first consideration, the first law.  I am full of little formulas of both manner and speech—­they afford me ample protection.  Make-talk is the complete salvation of the female Banker (social).  I never disdain the use of a promoter, no matter how trivial it may be. Promoters help you to float heavy, stupid men, and save you from a complete wreck on the shores of stupidity; and they act as most excellent elicitors when applied to clever men—­draw out the very best in them.  I have promoters and promoters.  I was asked not long since to give my definition or receipt of this valuable article.  This was the one which I gave:  Take some tangible object visible to the eye; for instance, a banjo.  Attract attention to it in some successful way.  Talk first about the banjo itself (the promoter), then if the man is