The Rhode Island Republican

MISCELLANEOUS SELECTIONS.

THE COQUETTE.—A CHARACTER.

The Coquette has no idea of love. Her heart is
not open to any sentiment of tenderness. She
knows not that enchanting passion which disposes
the mind, now to fear, and now to hope, which now
tortures with anxiety and now relaxes with joy;
which moistens the eye with a tear, that is now
soft and agreeable, and now painful and severe.—
The only objects of her life are to please and re-
ceive adulation. She must perpetually be in the cir-
cle of admirers. She will whisper one, smile to an-
other, and lean familiar on the shoulder of a third.
Solitude is her utmost aversion. She is jealous of
every woman, and would gain the admiration of eve-
ry man. Though chaste, you would fancy that she
entertained contempt of modesty. Her cheek is
never suffused with the crimson blush: her eye nev-
er courts the ground: and the uneasy suspicions,
and the gentle timidities of virtue never alarm her.
She flies from topic to topic: she asks a thousand
questions, and waits no return to them. Her body
shares the activity of her mind. She is constantly
throwing herself into attitudes that may display her
charms.
She draws on, and pulls off her glove, that
you may admire the shape of her hand and arm.
Whether the conversation be pleasant or grave, she
must laugh because her teeth are to be shown. The
fops that surround her, are more numerous than a
rigid decency may require, and more noisy than is
consistent with good breeding. With a pure imag-
ination, you would think that her thoughts were per-
petually employed on some plan of improper gal-
lantry. She is not fond of the company of her own
sex; and it is fortunate that she is so. Her levity might
give a taint to tender and susceptible hearts. She,
herself, is in no danger of any fatal indiscretion.
The coldness of her temperament protects her.
When she dresses, it is not her own taste she con-
sults. She must be in the very extremity of the
mode. She takes a pleasure in affecting weakness
and fragility: and it must be confessed, that she is
much too pretty to plant her foot on the ground.
When she walks, she must totter. Her nerves are
almost always in disorder; and, in the briskness of
vivacity, and in the bloom of health, she must give
herself an air of melancholy and sickness. She
must appear in every publick assembly; and is as
frequently at the church as at the theatre. But im-
agine not that she is so very unfashionable as to be
devout in the one, or attentive to what is exhibited
in the other. She is present in such places, not from
devotion, or the love of amusement, but for show.
Her habits of affectation may be excused, while her
beauty continues to dazzle, they survive it however,
and make her wrinkles more deformed. What may
pass at fifteen, is disgusting at fifty. The frivolity
of her youth is carried into her age; it even accoin-
panies her when wasted with disease; and it is odds,
but the last act of her life is a suggestion of whim.