Flirting made easy!

On a grey, cold, and melancholy Sunday afternoon, I was reading the North-China Daily News published over 100 years ago (1882) in my study. Sunlight sparkled my face and cleansed my mind when I was excited by an interesting title listed in the advertisement of Kelly & Walsh on the front page (Monday, 5th June, 1882). It is Charles H. Ross' Flirting made easy: a guide for girls: to which are added several full-length portraits of good, pretty girls and a few others of pretty good girls (London: 'Judy' Office, 1882) with illustrations by Dower Wilson. This is a book for girls and women, and, after all, men.

This illustration is from page 17. (source) The poor little boy is begging for love from the little girl, who is only generous enough to offer her indifference to his passion for her. Poor kid, the first victim. This victim might be Ross himself. He says "I believe young ladies begin to flirt much earlier in life than they used to do when I, who write this, was a good little boy with a huge collar and long-peaked cap."

Unfortunately, this book is not fully available on Gbook or Archive.org. I hope I can have a copy of it. Yet I found a blogger managed to jot down some funny paragraphs from Gbook. Here I quote a few:

The Art of Flirting among Wild Beasts: Women are fond of comparing men to monkeys, which is unjust to the men - or the monkeys. Monkeys are an imitative class and so are men. Many men get married through force of example. Woman ought not to be unkind to man on this account.

I feel sure that that dear girl has been vigorously brought up, and is the possessor of biceps calculated to cause a male weakling considerable surprise. She is not the model maiden of my youth with the bell-rope curls and lackadaisical ways, whom good Miss Primmer was wont to teach that no lady ever crossed her legs, and that no one ever went to heaven who stirred her tea with the snuffers.

And I add some more from what I have found on Gbook:

No, no, no, my dear young lady readers, don't waste the talents that I feel sure you possess upon the desert air, or even upon other young ladies, however appreciative. Don't flock, in fact — no, pray don't flock ! What 's the good?

True. Ladies, don't flock if you want to flirt or to be flirted.