After the customary programme of riding to allay the curiosity and excitement of the people, I obtain bread, fruit, eggs, butter to cook them in, and charcoal for a fire, the elements of a very good supper for a hungry traveller.  Borrowing a handleless frying-pan, I am setting about preparing my own supper, when a respectable-looking Persian steps out from the crowd of curious on-lookers and voluntarily takes this rather onerous duty out of my hands.  Readily obtaining my consent, he quickly kindles a fire, and scrambles and fries the eggs.  While my volunteer cook is thus busily engaged, a company of distinguished travellers passing along the road halt at the tchai-khan to smoke a kalian and drink tea.  The caravanserai proprietor approaches me, and winking mysteriously, intimates that by going outside and riding for the edification of the new arrivals I will be pretty certain to get a present of a keran (about twenty cents).  As he appears anxious to have me accommodate them, I accordingly go out and favor them with a few turns on a level piece of ground outside.  After they have departed the proprietor covertly offers me a half-keran piece in a manner so that everybody can observe him attempting to give me something without seeing the amount.  The wily Persian had doubtless solicited a present from the travellers for me, obtained, perhaps, a couple of kerans, and watching a favorable opportunity, offers me the half-keran piece; the wily ways of these people are several degrees more ingenious even than the dark ways and vain tricks of Bret Harte’s “Heathen Chinee.”  Occupying one of the rooms are two young noblemen travelling with their mother to visit the Governor of Zendjan; after I have eaten my supper, they invite me to their apartments for the evening; their mother has a samovar under full headway, and a number of hard boiled eggs.  Her two hopeful sons are engaged in a drinking bout of arrack; they are already wildly hilarious and indulging in brotherly embraces and doubtful love-songs.  Their fond mother regards them with approving smiles as they swallow glass after glass of the raw fiery spirit, and become gradually more intoxicated and hilarious.  Instead of checking their tippling, as a fond and prudent Ferenghi mother would have done, this indulgent parent encourages them rather than otherwise, and the more deeply intoxicated and hilariously happy the sons become, the happier seems the mother.  About nine o’clock they fall to weeping tears of affection for each other and for myself, and degenerate into such maudlin sentimentality generally, that I naturally become disgusted, accept a parting glass of tea, and bid them good-evening.

The caravanserai-Jee assigns me the furnished chamber above referred to; the room is found to be well carpeted, contains a mattress and an abundance of flaming red quilts, and on a small table reposes a well-thumbed copy of the Koran with gilt lettering and illumined pages; for these really comfortable quarters I am charged the trifling sum of one keran.