During the evening one of the Governor’s sons, Prince Sultan Madjid Mirza, comes in with a few leading dignitaries to spend an hour in chatting and smoking.  This young prince proves one of the most intelligent Persians I have met in the country; besides being very well informed for a provincial Persian, he is bright and quick-witted.  Among the gentlemen he brings in with him is a man who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca via “Iskenderi” (Alexandria) and Suez, and has, consequently, seen and ridden on the Egyptian railway.  The Prince has heard his description of this railway, and the light thus gained has not unnaturally had the effect of whetting his curiosity to hear more of the marvellous iron roads of Frangistan; and after exhausting the usual programme of queries concerning cycling, the conversation leads, by easy transition, to the subject of railways.

“Do they have railways in Yenghi Donia?” questioned the Prince.

“Plenty of railways; plenty of everything,” I reply.

“Like the one at Iskenderi and Stamboul?”

“Better and bigger than both these put together a hundred times over; the Iskenderi railroad is very small.”

Nods and smiles of acquiescence from Prince and listeners follow this statement, which show plainly enough that they consider it a pardonable lie, such as every Persian present habitually indulges in himself and thinks favorably of in others.

“Railroads are good things, and Ferenghis are very clever people,” says the Prince, renewing the subject and handing me a handful of salted melon seeds from his pocket, meanwhile nibbling some himself.

“Yes; why don’t you have railroads in Iran?  You could then go to Teheran in a few hours.”

The Prince smiles amusingly at the thought, as though conscious of railroads in Persia being a dream altogether too bright to ever materialize, and shaking his head, says:  “Pool neis” (we have no money).

“The English have money and would build the railroad; but, ‘Mollah neis’ —­Baron Reuter?—­you know Baron Reuter—­’ Mollah neis,’ not ‘pool neis.’”

The Prince smiles, and signifies that he is well enough aware where the trouble lies; but we talk no more of railroads, for he and his father and brothers belong to the party of progress in Persia, and the triumph of priests and old women over the Shah and Baron Reuter’s railway is to them a distressful and humiliating subject.

The late lamented O’Donovan, of “To the Merve” fame, used to make Semnoon his headquarters while dodging about on the frontier, and was personally known to everyone present.  Semnoon is celebrated for the excellence of its kalian tobacco, and O’Donovan was celebrated in Semnoon for his love of the kalian.  This evening, in talking about him, the telegraph-jee says that “when he pulled at the kalian he pulled with such tremendous eagerness that the flames leaped up to the ceiling, and after three whiffs you couldn’t see anybody in the room for smoke!”