Turn a steady, dependable Capricorn male inside out, and you’ll find a merry, gentle dreamer who longs for the free wind to blow through his hair and finds the sweet fragrance of compliments intoxicating-who hungers for excitement and thirsts for adventure. Only a chosen few can release this lonely soul from his secret prison.

Sun signs can be wonderfully helpful if you’re inclined to judge a book by its jacket. Here you were thinking that Capricorn fellow would make a great school teacher but a miserable lover. You’d just about decided he’d rather be president than be yours. He impressed you as a man who would rather see his name written in the social register than in your diary. Now you discover that he has a heart as warm and friendly as a cozy wood fire on a winter night. I know it’s exhilarating, but wait just a moment before you dash off to give him a big bear hug and expect him to -fly you to the moon. Those surprises I just described are part of his inner nature. He’ll be thrilled and impressed if you guess, but inner nature means just that-inner nature. Chances are he’ll never let all those gauzy dreams of care­less rapture escape and run around loose. Just so you know they’re inside him. That’s enough. Don’t go expecting your Capricorn to dash barefoot through the buttercups. You can’t change his basic Saturnine personality.

What you can do, however, is laugh at his shaggy dog stories until he feels brave enough to tell more sophisti­cated tales. You can hint that you think there are banked fires beneath his conservative manner until he has the confidence to let a flame or two leap out. You can tell him you find his kind of dreams more colorful, because no dream is as bright as the one that really happens, so he’ll be encouraged to weave more of them. Someday, he will reach the top of his special mountain, and you’ll be right there beside him, mighty proud of your determined goat-and mighty glad you believed in his practical dreams.

Capricorns pretend they can live without compliments, and the way they behave when they get one is pretty con­vincing proof. Did you ever say something nice to your Capricorn man and see it fall as flat as the expression on his face? Don’t be hasty. Just because the goat is such an expert at fooling himself doesn’t mean you have to be fooled, too. Actually, he desperately needs to be told he is good, clever, handsome, desirable and interesting, but since he’ll seldom make his need visible, he gets few orchids. Consequently, he may be a little rusty, and won’t know quite what to do when someone openly admires him, so he covers his embarrassment by making a wry joke or ignoring it, a reaction which can freeze people into de­ciding never to risk flattering that poker face again. The impression is created that he hates compliments, so he gets even fewer. It’s a vicious circle. Maybe it’s your fault more than his. Next time you give your Capricorn a verbal bouquet, look at his ears. See how pink they are? See that faint twinkle in his eye and how his nose twitches ever so slightly? He’s as pleased as Sunday punch. Just because he doesn’t dance a jig or roll in the grass like Leo, the lion, doesn’t mean he hasn’t been made deeply happy and ten feet taller. He needs to be seen as the truly great guy he is. Nature and the stars keep him from advertising. You’ll have to be his press agent.” (Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs)