About 11 o’clock I, who am acting as wardrobe-mender to some very untidy clothes and socks, get to work, and the young men go to the town and appear at lunch-time.  We hear what the local news is, and what Mr. MacMurray has said and Mr. McLean thought, and sometimes one of the people from the Russian hospital comes in.  About 3 we put on goloshes and take exercise single-file on the pathways cut in the snow.  At 5 the samovar appears and tea and cake, and we talk to the dogs and to each other.  We dress for dinner, because that is our creed; and we burn a good deal of wood, and go to bed early.

Travel really means movement.  Otherwise, it is far better to stay at home.  I am beginning to sympathise with the Americans who insist upon doing two cities a day.  We got some papers to-day dated October 26th, and also a few letters of the same date.

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[Page Heading:  UNFINISHED ARTICLE ON PERSIA]

Unfinished Article on Persia found among Miss Macnaughtan’s papers.

Persia is a difficult country to write about, for unless one colours the picture too highly to be recognisable, it is apt to be uninteresting even under the haze of the summer sun, while in wintertime the country disappears under a blanket of white snow.  Of course, most of us thought that Persia was somewhere in the tropics, and it gives us a little shock when we find ourselves living in a temperature of 8 degrees below zero.  The rays of the sun are popularly supposed to minimise the effect of this cold, and a fortnight’s fog on the Persian highlands has still left one a believer in this phenomenon, for when the sun does shine, it does it handsomely, and, according to the inhabitants, it is only when strangers are here that it turns sulky.  Be that as it may, the most loyal lover of Persia will have to admit that Persian mud is the deepest and blackest in the world, and that snow and mud in equal proportions to a depth of 8 inches make anything but agreeable travelling.  Snow is indiscriminately shovelled down off the roofs of houses on to the heads of passers-by, and great holes in the road are accepted as the inevitable accompaniment to winter traffic.

In the bazaars—­narrow, and filled with small booths, where Manchester cotton is stacked upon shelves—­the merchants sit huddled up on their counters, each with a cotton lahaf (quilt) over him, under which is a small brazier of ougol (charcoal).  In this way he manages to remain in a thawed condition, while a pipe consoles him for his little trade and the horrible weather.  Before him, in the narrow alleys of the bazaar, Persians walk with their umbrellas unfurled, and Russians have put the convenient bashluk (a sort of woollen hood) over their heads and ears.  The Arab, in his long camel-skin coat, looks impervious to the weather, and women with veiled faces and long black cloaks pick their way through the mire.  Throngs of donkeys, melancholy and overladen, their small feet sinking in the slush, may be with the foot-passengers.  Some pariah dogs make a dirty patch in the snow, and a troop of Cossacks, their long cloaks spotted with huge snow-flakes, trot heavily through the narrow lanes.