is easily persuaded that she has a very winning way of talking, and thinking it sufficient, for the sake of good-breeding, to disown her merit, and in some witty repartee retort the compliment, he makes her swallow very contentedly, the substance of every thing he tells her. The upshot is, that, with the satisfaction of having saved ninepence per yard, she has bought her silk exactly at the same price as any body else might have done, and often gives sixpence more than, rather than not have sold it, he would have taken. It is possible that this lady, for want of being sufficiently flattered, for a fault she is pleased to find in his behaviour, or perhaps the tying of his neckcloth, or some other dislike as substantial, may be lost, and her custom bestowed on some other of the fraternity. But where many of them live in a cluster, it is not always easily determined which shop to go to, and the reasons some of the fair sex have for their choice, are often very whimsical, and kept as great a secret. We never follow our inclinations with more freedom, than where they cannot be traced, and it is unreasonable for others to suspect them. A virtuous woman has preferred one house to all the rest, because she had seen a handsome fellow in it, and another of no bad character for having received greater civility before it, than had been paid her any where else, when she had no thoughts of buying, and was going to Paul's church: for among the fashionable mercers, the fair dealer must keep before his own door, and to draw in random customers, make use of no other freedom or importunities than an obsequious air, with a submissive posture, and perhaps a bow to every well dressed female that offers to look towards his shop. What I have said last, makes me think on another way of inviting customers, the most distant in the world from what I have been speaking of, I mean that which is practised by the watermen, especially on those whom, by their mien and garb, they know to be peasants. It is not unpleasant to see half a dozen people surround a man they never saw in their lives before, and two of them that can get the nearest, clapping each an arm over his neck, hug him in as loving and familiar a manner, as if he was their brother newly come home from an East India voyage; a third lays hold of his hand, another of his sleeve, his coat, the buttons of it, or any thing he can come at, while a fifth or a sixth, who has scampered twice round him already, without being able to get at him, plants himself directly before the man in hold, and within three inches of his nose, contradicting his rivals with an open mouthed cry, shows him a dreadful set of large teeth, and a small remainder of chewed bread and cheese, which the countryman's arrival had hindered from being swallowed.