a new sense of nature’s loveliness; the soft, chastening light of the Persian moon converts the gaudy gates, the dead mud-walls, the spraggling trees, and the background of snowy mountains nine miles away, into a picture that will photograph itself on one’s memory forever.  On the way home I meet one of the lady missionaries — which reminds me that I ought to mention something about the peculiar position of a Ferenghi lady in these Mohammedan countries, where it is considered highly improper for a woman to expose her face in public.  The Persian lady on the streets is enveloped in a shroud-like garment that transforms her into a shapeless and ungraceful-looking bundle of dark-blue cotton stuff.  This garment covers head and everything except the face; over the face is worn a white veil of ordinary sheeting, and opposite the eyes is inserted an oblong peep-hole of open needle-work, resembling a piece of perforated card-board.  Not even a glimpse of the eye is visible, unless the lady happens to be handsome and coquettishly inclined; she will then manage to grant you a momentary peep at her face; but a wise and discreet Persian lady wouldn’t let you see her face on the street — no, not for worlds and worlds!

The European lady with her uncovered face is a conundrum and an object of intense curiosity, even in Teheran at the present day; and in provincial cities, the wife of the lone consul or telegraph employee finds it highly convenient to adopt the native costume, face-covering included, when venturing abroad.  Here, in the capital, the wives and daughters of foreign ministers, European officers and telegraphists, have made uncovered female faces tolerably familiar to the natives; but they cannot quite understand but that there is something highly indecorous about it, and the more unenlightened Persians doubtless regard them as quite bold and forward creatures.  Armenian women conceal their faces almost as completely as do the Persian, when they walk abroad; by so doing they avoid unpleasant criticism, and the rude, inquisitive gaze of the Persian men.  Although the Persian readily recognizes the fact that a Sahib’s wife or sister must be a superior person to an Armenian female, she is as much an object of interest to him when she appears with her face uncovered on the street, as his own wives in their highly sensational in-door costumes would be to some of us.  In order to establish herself in the estimation of the average Persian, as all that a woman ought to be, the European lady would have to conceal her face and cover her shapely, tight-fitting dress with an inelegant, loose mantle, whenever she ventured outside her own doors.  With something of a penchant for undertaking things never before accomplished, I proposed one morning to take a walk around the ramparts that encompass the Persian capital.  The question arose as to the distance.  Ali Akbar, the head fan-ash, said it was six farsakhs (about twenty-four miles); Meshedi