too lumpy to admit of mounting, as is frequently the case near a village,
and my six companions accompany me to ridable ground. As I mount and
wheel away, they wave hats and send up three ringing cheers and a
"tiger," hurrahs that roll across the gray Persian plain to the echoing
hills, the strangest sound, perhaps, these grim old hills have ever
echoed; certainly, they never before echoed an English cheer.

And now, as my friends of the telegraph staff turn about and wend their
way back to Teheran, is as good a time as any to mention briefly the
manner in which these genial lightning-jerkers assisted to render my five
months' sojourn in the Persian capital agreeable. But a few short hours
after my arrival in Teheran, I was sought out by Messrs. Meyrick and
North, who no sooner learned of my intention to winter here, than they
extended a cordial invitation to join them in their already established
bachelors' quarters, where four disconsolate halves of humanity were
already messing harmoniously together. With them I took up my quarters,
and, under the liberal and wholesome gastronomic arrangements of the
establishment, soon acquired my usual semi-embon-point condition, and
recovered from that gaunt, hungry appearance that the hardships and scant
fare of the journey from Constantinople had imparted. The house belonged
to Mr. North, and he managed to give me a little room to myself for
literary work, and, under the influence of a steady stream of letters and
papers from friends and well-wishers in England and America, that snug
little apartment, with a round, moon-like hole in the thick mud wall for
a window, soon acquired the den-like aspect that seems inseparable from
the occupation of distributing ink.

Three native servants cooked for us, waited on us, turned up missing when
wanted for anything particular, cheated us and each other, swore eternal
honesty and fidelity to our faces, called us infidel dogs and pedar sags