favorable as my impression of
the picture in which he is set--the picture as just described; a sinister
leer characterizes the expression of his face, and what appears like a
nod, with an altogether unnecessary amount of condescension in it,
characterizes his greeting. Hopping down to the ground, lamp in hand, he
examines the bicycle minutely, and then indirectly addressing the
by-standers, he says, "Pooh! this thing was made in Tiflis; there's
hundreds of them in Tiflis." Having delivered himself of this lying
statement, he hops up on the menzil front again and, without paying the
slightest attention to me, resumes his squatting position at the fire,
and his occupation of watching the preparations of his cook. Nothing is
more evident to me than that he had never before seen a bicycle, and
astounded at this conduct on the part of an officer who doubtless thinks
himself a civilized being, even though he might not understand anything
of our own conception of an "officer and a gentleman," I begin looking
around for an explanation from the fellow who brought me the invitation,
thinking there must be some mistake. The man has disappeared and is
nowhere to be found.

The chapar-jee accompanied us to the caravanserai, and seeing that this
man has bolted, and that the Russian officer's intentions toward me are
anything but hospitable, he calls the missing man--or the officer, I
don't know which--a pedar suktar (son of a burnt father), and
suggests returning to the cold comfort of the bala-khana. My own feelings
upon realizing that this wretched, unscrupulous Muscovite has craftily
designed and executed this plan for no other purpose but to insult and
humiliate one whom he took for granted to be an Englishman, in the eyes
of the Persian travellers present, I prefer to pass over and leave to the
reader's imagination. After sleeping on it and thinking it over, early
next morning I returned to the caravanserai, bent on finding the fellow
who brought the invitation, giving him a thrashing, and seeing if the
officer would take it up in his behalf. In the morning, the cossacks said
he had gone away; whether gone away or hiding somewhere in the
caravanserai, he was nowhere to be found; which perhaps was just as well,
for the affair might have ended in bloodshed, and in a fight the chances
would have been decidedly against myself.

This incident, disagreeable though it be to think of, is instructive as
showing the possibilities for me