Even in such a scene as this, notwithstanding the opportunities afforded by the crowd and confusion, it is extremely rare to find Turkish men and women making eyes at one another or exchanging so much as a smile or glance of intelligence. Gallantry, _coram populo_, does not exist there as it is seen in our countries; there are none of those melancholy sentinels who march up and down beneath the loved one’s windows, or those devoted followers who will walk for three hours behind the beloved object. Their love-making is carried on entirely within doors. If by chance you should happen to come upon a young Turk in the act of gazing up at a grated window behind which may be detected the flash of an eye or a white hand, you may take it for almost certain that they are a pair of fiancés. To engaged couples alone are meetings and rendezvous permitted and all the other childish accompaniments of authorized courtship, such as conversing together at a distance by means of a flower or ribbon or by the color of the dress or scarf. In this art the Turkish women are very proficient. There are a thousand small objects, such as flowers, fruits, grass, feathers, stones, to each one of which some especial meaning is attached, an epithet or verb, or even a whole sentence, so that an entire letter may be expressed in a single bunch of flowers, and any number of things be said with a little box or purse full of odds and ends apparently collected by merest chance; and, as the signification of the various objects is usually expressed in verse, every lover is in a position to compose an amorous couplet, or even a polymetrical poem, in five minutes. A few cloves, a scrap of paper, a slice of pear, a bit of soap, a match, an end of gold thread, a grain of cinnamon and one of pepper, signify, “I have long loved you. I pant, languish, die with love for you. Give me a little hope; do not repulse me. Answer me with a word.” And not only love-affairs, but thousands of other matters, can be expressed with equal facility--reproof, counsel, warning, news. Young girls just beginning to be conscious that they have hearts find endless occupation and amusement in committing all this symbolic language to memory, and in composing long letters addressed to imaginary sultans of twenty. Then there is the language of signs or gestures, some of which are extremely graceful, such, for example, as that of the man who, wishing to imply that he has been wounded by the force of his love, stabs himself in the heart with an invisible dagger, to which the woman responds by letting her arms fall at her sides in such a way that the _ferajeh_ opens a little in front, which means, “I open my arms to you.” No European, however, has probably ever witnessed the actual interchange of these signs, which have now almost passed into traditions, and are only to be learned, moreover, from some ingenuous _hanum_ who has confided them to a Christian friend. Were