One day, a visitor appears upon the scene, carrying a walking-cane.  Mohammed Ahzim Khan pounces upon him instantly and I grabbing the stick, examines it closely, evidently suspicious lest it should be a sword-stick.  He is the most persistent “gazer” I have yet met in Asia; hour after hour he squats on his hams at my feet and stares intently into my face, as though trying hard to read my inmost thoughts.  Oriental-like, he is fascinated by the mystery of my appearance here, and there is no such thing as shaking off his silent, wondering gaze for a minute.  He is on hand promptly in the morning to watch my rude matinual toilet, and he always watches me retire for the night.  Even when I betake myself to a retired part of the garden in the dusk of evening to take a sluice-bath with a bucket of water, his white-robed figure is always loitering near.

Four men are stationed about my bungalow at night; their respective armaments vary from a Martini-Henry rifle attached to a picturesque Asiatic stock, owned by Abdur Rahman Khan, to an immense knobbed cudgel wielded by a titleless youth named Osman.

Osman’s sole wardrobe consists of a coarse night-shirt style of garment, that in the early part of its career was probably white, but which is now neither white nor equal to the task of protecting him from the penetrating rays of the summer sun.  His occupation appears to be that of all-round utility man for whomsoever cares to order him about.  Osman has to bring water and pour it on my hands whenever I want to wash, hie him away to the bazaar to search for dates or anything my epicurean taste demands in addition to what is provided, feed the horse, change the position of the pee-wit to keep it in the shade, sweep out my bungalow, and perform all sorts of menial offices.  Every noble loafer about my person seems anxious to have Osman continually employed in contributing to my comfort; Mohammed Ahzim Khan even deprecates the independence displayed in lacing up my own shoes.  “Osman,” he says, “let Osman do it.”

Osman’s chief characteristic is a reckless disregard for the conventionalities of social life and religion; he never seems to bother himself about either washing his person or saying his prayers.  Somewhere, not far away, every evening the faithful are summoned to prayer by a muezzin with the most musical and pathetic voice I have heard in all Islam.  The voice of this muezzin calling “Allah-il-A-l-l-a-h,” as it comes floating over the houses and gardens in the calm silence of the summer evenings, is wonderfully impressive.  From the pulpits of all Christendom I have yet to hear an utterance so full of pathos and supplication, or that carries with it the impressions of such deep sincerity as the “Allah-il-A-l-l-a-h” of this Afghan muezzin in the Herat Valley.  It is a supplication to the throne of grace that rings in my ears even as I write, months after, and it touches the hearts of every Afghan within hearing and taps