New Yorkers about bargains, or Bostonians about books. A man
who has not one absorbing aim can get a great many
miscellaneous things into each twenty-four hours; and there was
not a day in which Philip did not make himself agreeable and
useful to many people, receive many confidences, and give much
good-humored advice about matters of which he knew nothing. His
friends' children ran after him in the street, and he knew the
pet theories and wines of elderly gentlemen. He said that he
won their hearts by remembering every occurrence in their lives
except their birthdays.

It was, perhaps, no drawback on the popularity of Philip
Malbone that he had been for some ten years reproached as a
systematic flirt by all women with whom he did not happen at
the moment to be flirting. The reproach was unjust; he had
never done anything systematically in his life; it was his
temperament that flirted, not his will. He simply had that most
perilous of all seductive natures, in which the seducer is
himself seduced. With a personal refinement that almost
amounted to purity, he was constantly drifting into loves more
profoundly perilous than if they had belonged to a grosser man.
Almost all women loved him, because he loved almost all; he
never had to assume an ardor, for he always felt it. His heart
was multivalve; he could love a dozen at once in various modes
and gradations, press a dozen hands in a day, gaze into a dozen
pair of eyes with unfeigned tenderness; while the last pair
wept for him, he was looking into the next. In truth, he loved
to explore those sweet depths; humanity is the highest thing to
investigate, he said, and the proper study of mankind is woman.
Woman needs to be studied while under the influence of emotion;