receipt and expenditure; she calculates almost unconsciously that the time and attention and interest excited by the attractive powers of others is so much homage subtracted from her own.  That beautiful aphorism, “The human heart is like heaven—­the more angels the more room for them,” is to such persons as unintelligible in its loving spirit as in its wonderful philosophic truth.  Their craving is insatiable, once it has become habitual, and their appetite is increased and stimulated, instead of being appeased, by the anxiously-sought-for nourishment.

These observations can only strictly apply to the fatal desire for general admiration.  As long as the approbation only of the wise and good is our object, it is not so much that there are fewer opportunities of exciting the feeling of envy at this approbation being granted to others; there is, further, an instinctive feeling of its incompatibility with the very object we are aiming at.  The case is altogether different when we seek to attract those whose admiration may be won by qualities quite different from any connected with moral excellence.  There is here no restraint on our evil feelings:  and when we cannot equal the accomplishments, the beauty, and the graces of another, we may possibly be tempted to envy, and, still further, to depreciate, those of the hated rival—­perhaps, worse than all, may be tempted to seek to attract attention by means less simple and less obvious.  If the receiving of admiration be injurious to the mind, what must the seeking for it be!  “The flirt of many seasons” loses all mental perceptions of refinement by long practice in hardihood, as the hackneyed practitioner unconsciously deepens the rouge upon her cheek, until, unperceived by her blunted visual organs, it loses all appearance of truth and beauty.  Some instances of the kind I allude to nave come before even your inexperienced eyes; and from the shrinking surprise with which you now contemplate them, I have no doubt that you would wish to shun even the first step in the same career.  Indeed, it is probable that you, under any circumstances, would never go so far in coquetry as those to whom your memory readily recurs.  Your innate delicacy, your feminine high-mindedness may, at any future time, as well as at present, preserve you from the bad taste of challenging those attentions which your very vanity would reject as worthless if they were not voluntarily offered.

Nevertheless, even in you, habits of dissipation may produce an effect which to your inmost being may be almost equally injurious.  You may possess an antidote to prevent any external manifestations of the poisonous effects of an indulged craving for excitement; but general admiration, however spontaneously offered and modestly received, has nevertheless a tendency to create a necessity for mental stimulants.  This, among other ill-effects, will, worst of all, incapacitate you from the appreciative enjoyment of healthy food.