[Page Heading:  HOW NEWS TRAVELS IN PERSIA]

I am still staying at the British Consulate.  The Consul, Mr. Cowan, is a good fellow, and Mr. Lightfoot, his chum, is a real backwoodsman, full of histories of adventures, fights, “natives,” and wars in many lands.  He seems to me one of those headstrong, straight, fine fellows whom one only meets in the wilds.  England doesn’t agree with them; they haven’t always a suit of evening clothes; but in a tight place one knows how cool he would be, and for yarns there is no one better.  He tells one a lot about this country, and he knows the Arabs like brothers.  Their system of communicating with each other is as puzzling to him as it is to everyone else.  News travels faster among them than any messenger or post can take it.  At Bagdad they heard from these strange people of the fall of Basra, which is 230 miles away, within 25 hours of its having been taken.  Mr. Lightfoot says that even if he travels by car Arab news is always ahead of him, and where he arrives with news it is known already.  Telegraphy is unknown in the places he speaks of, except in Bagdad, of course, and Persia owns exactly one line of railway, eight miles long, which leads to a tomb!

More important than any man here are the dogs—­Smudge, Jimmy, and the puppy.  Most of the conversation is addressed to them.  All of it is about them.

28 February.  A day on the Persian front.—­I wake early because it is always so cold at 4 a.m., and I generally boil up water for my hot-water bottle and go to sleep again.  Then at 8 comes the usual Resident Sahib’s servant, whom I have known in many countries and in many climes.  He is always exactly alike, and the Empire depends upon him!  He is thin, he is mysterious.  He is faithful, and allows no one to rob his master but himself.  He believes in the British.  He worships British rule, and he speaks no language but his own, though he probably knows English perfectly, and listens to it at every meal without even the cock of an ear!  He is never hurried, never surprised.  What he thinks his private idol may know—­no one else does.  His master’s boots—­especially the brown sort—­are part of his religion.  He understands an Englishman, and is unmoved by his behaviour, whatever it may be.  I have met him in India, in Kashmir, at Embassies, in Consulates, on steamers, and I have never known his conduct alter by a hair’s breadth.  He is piped in red, and let that explain him, as it explains much else that is British.  Just a thin red line down the length of a trouser or round a coat, and the man thus adorned is part of the Empire.

The man piped in red lights my fire every morning in Persia, and arranges my tub, and we breakfast very late because there is nothing to do on three days of the week—­i.e., Friday, the Persian Sabbath, Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and Sunday, the Armenian Sunday.  On these three days neither bazaars nor offices are open.  Business is at a standstill.  The Consulate smokes pipes, develops photographs, and reads old novels.  On the four busy days we breakfast at 10 o’clock, and during the meal we learn what the dogs have done during the night—­whether Jimmy has barked, or Smudge has lain on someone’s bed, or the puppy “coolly put his head on my pillow.”