tes, wine-glasses, and accessories, the table service made in Europe
being in most excellent taste, white and gold with a small circle in
which the Persian "Lion and Sun" were surmounted by the regal crown.

[Illustration: In the Shah's Palace Grounds, Teheran.]

We go next into the Shah's favourite apartments, where he spends most of
his time when in Teheran. We are now in the small room in which I had
already been received in audience by his Majesty on his birthday, a room
made entirely of mirrors. There was a low and luxurious red couch on the
floor, and we trod on magnificent soft silk carpets of lovely designs.
One could not resist feeling with one's fingers the deliciously soft
Kerman rug of a fascinating artistic green, and a charming red carpet
from Sultanabad. The others came from Isfahan and Kashan. The most
valuable and beautiful of all, however, was the white rug, made in
Sultanabad, on which the Shah stands when receiving in audience.

Next after the carpets, a large clock by Benson with no less than
thirteen different dials, which told one at a glance the year, the month,
the week, the day, the moon, the hour, minutes, seconds, and anything
else one might wish to know, was perhaps the most noticeable item in the
Shah's room.

There was nothing in the furniture to appeal to one, the chairs and
tables being of cheap bamboo of the familiar folding pattern such as are
commonly characteristic of superior boarding-houses. In the way of art
there was a large figure of a woman resting under a palm tree, a
photographic enlargement of the Shah's portrait, and on the Shah's
writing-desk two handsome portraits of the Emperor and Empress of Russia,
the Emperor occupying the highest place of honour. Two smaller
photographs of the Czar and Czarina were to be seen also in shilling
plush frames on another writing-desk, by the side of an electric clock
and night-light.

The eye was attracted by three terrestrial globes and an astronomical one
with constellations standing on a table. A number of very tawdry articles
were lying about on the other pieces of furniture; such were a metal dog
holding a ten-shilling watch, paper frames, cheap imitation leather
articles, numerous photographs of the Shah, a copy of the _Petit Journal_
framed, and containing a representation of the attempt on the Shah's
life, an amber service, and last, but not least, the nut-cracker and the
empty nutshells, the contents of which the Shah was in