ttle glasses of tea, kalians, cigarettes,
and sweetmeats, as well as tiny bottles of lemon-juice and rose-water, a
few drops of these two last-named articles being used by some of the
guests to impart a fanciful flavor to their tea. Now and then a new guest
arrives, steps out of his shoes in the hallway, salaams, and takes his
proper position among the people already here. Everybody sits on the
carpet except me, for whom a three-legged camp-stool has been
thoughtfully provided.

Finally, all the guests having arrived, I ride several times around the
brick-walks, the strange audience of turbaned priests and veiled women
showing their great approval in murmuring undertones of "kylie khoob" and
involuntary acclamations of "Mashallah! mash-all-ah!" as they witness
with bated breath the strange and incomprehensible scene of a Ferenghi
riding a vehicle, that will not stand alone.

Altogether, the great tomasha at Mardan Khan's is a decided success.
Scarcely can this be said, however, of the "little tomasha" given to the
members of Abbas Khan's own family on the way home. Abbas Khan's compound
is very small, and the brick-walks very rough and broken; therefore, it
is hardly surprising to me, though probably somewhat surprising to him,
when, in turning a corner I execute an undignified header into a bunch of
busbies.

The third day after my arrival in Meshed, I received a telegram from the
British Charge d'Affaires at Teheran saying: "You must not attempt to
cross the frontier of Afghanistan at any point." Two days later the
expected courier arrives from the Boundary Commission Camp with a letter
saying: "It is useless for you to raise the question of coming to the
Commission Camp. In the first place, the Afghans would never allow you to
come here; and if you should happen to reach here, you would never be
able to get away again."

These two very encouraging missives from our own people seem at first
thought more heartless than even the "permission refused" of the
Russians. It occurs to me that this "you must not attempt to cross the
Afghan frontier" might just as easily have been told me at the Legation
at Teheran as when I had travelled six hundred miles to get to it; but
the ways of diplomacy are past the comprehension of ordinary mortals.

What, after all, are the ambitions and enterprises of an individual,
compared to the will and policy of an empire? No matter whether the
empire be semi-civilized and despotic, or fre