In this manner I succeed in ridding the telegraph-office of the crowd; but there is no getting rid of the visitors.  Everybody in the place who thinks himself a little better than the ragamuffin ryots comes and squats on his hams in the little hut-like office, sips the telegraph-jee’s sweetened tea, smokes his kalians, and spends the afternoon in staring wonderingly at me and the bicycle.  Having picked up a little Persian during the winter, I am able to talk with them, and understand them, rather better than last season, and, Persian-like, they ply me mercilessly with questions.  Often, when some one asks a question of me, Mirza Hassan, as becomes a telegraphies, and a person of profound erudition, thoughtfully saves me the trouble of replying by undertaking to furnish the desired information himself.  One old mollah wants to know how many farsakhs it is from Aivan-i-Kaif to Yenghi Donia (New World-America); ere I can frame a suitable reply, Mirza Hassan forestalls my intentions by answering, in a decisive tone of voice that admits of no appeal, “Khylie!” “Khylie” is a handy word that the Persians always fall back on when their knowledge of great numbers or long distances is vague and shadowy; it is an indefinite term, equivalent to our word “many.”  Mirza Hassan does not know whether America is two hundred farsakhs away or two thousand, but he knows it to be “khylie farsakhs,” and that is perfectly satisfactory to himself, and the white-turbaned questioner is perfectly satisfied with “khylie” for an answer.

A person from the New World is naturally a rara avis with the simple villagers of Aivan-i-Kaif, and their inquisitiveness concerning Yenghi Donia and Yenghi Donians fairly runs riot, and shapes itself into all manner of questions.  They want to know whether the people smoke kalians and ride horses—­real horses, not asps-i-awhans-in Yenghi Donia, and whether the Valiat smoked the kalian with me at Hadji Agha.  Mirza Hassan explains about the kalian and horses; he enlightens his wondering auditors to the extent that Yenghi Donians smoke nargilehs and chibouques instead of kalians, and he contemptuously pooh-poohs the idea of them keeping riding-horses when they are clever enough to make iron horses that require nothing to eat or drink and no rest.  About the question of the Heir Apparent smoking the kalian with me he betrays as lively an interest as anybody in the room, but he maintains a discreet silence until I answer in the negative, when he surveys his guests with the air of one who pities their ignorance, and says, “Kalian neis.”

A lusty-lunged youngster of about three summers has been interrupting the genial flow of conversation by making “Rome howl” in an adjoining room, and Mirza Hassan fetches him in and consoles him with sundry lumps of sugar.  The advent of the limpid-eyed toddler leads the thoughts and questions of the company into more domestic channels.  After exhaustive questioning about my own affairs, Mirza Hassan, with