amuſe her, and engaged in frequent traffic with the milliners at Conſtantinople, that I might be the firſt to procure the improvements of female dreſs, according to the lateſt faſhion of the metropolis, which I conveyed by various ways to the lady of my heart, ſo that ſhe could eaſily divine the author of theſe gallantries.
Hadſt thou any experience in the affairs of love, my ſon, thou wouldſt not be ignorant that ſuch apparently inſignificant attentions are, in the world of gallantry, a kind of hieroglyphics which the uninitiated take for empty toying and trifling, but which have as determinate a ſenſe as letters and words in common language; they are a ſpecies of free-maſon’s dialect, which two, who are in the ſecret, can employ, in the preſence of a third perſon, who may, for any thing he knows, be bought or ſold; whereas the lovers underſtand every word without further comment or explanation.‘Theſe
