of one of three punishments, and you took all three.'

Persian servants regard their fixed pay as but a retaining fee, and look
for their real wages in perquisites. They show considerable ingenuity
and brightness of idea in reasons for purchasing this, that, and the
other thing, not really required, but affording opportunities for
'pickings.' A new head-servant, on looking round his master's premises,
and seeing no opening for a fresh purchase, at last cast his eye on the
fowls, kept to secure a supply of fresh eggs, instead of the doubtful
ones bought in the bazaar. He introduced stale eggs into the fowl-house,
and on their condition being remarked at breakfast, he gravely explained
that he had noticed the hens were old, and it sometimes happened that
old hens laid stale eggs, whereas young hens always laid fresh eggs; so
he suggested clearing out the fowl-house and restocking it with young
poultry.

The leisure time the servants have is not always well spent, it is true,
but they have ideas of imagination and sentiment, which in some degree
is suggestive of refinement. I have seen this shown in their love of
singing birds, and their dandy ways of dress; for some of them are very
particular as to the cut of a coat and the fit of a hat. I have
sometimes been interested in seeing them carefully tending their pet
nightingales, cleaning the cages, and decking them out with bits of
coloured cloth and any flowers in season. In November I saw quite a
dozen cages thus brightened, each with its brisk-looking nightingale
occupant, put out in the sunshine in the courtyard; and on asking about
such a collection of cages, was told rather shyly, as if fearing a smile
at their sentimental ways, that there was an afternoon tea that day in
the neighbourhood, to which the nightingales and their owners were
going. These singing-bird-parties are held in the underground rooms of
houses, which are cool in summer and warm in winter, and I imagine the
company and rivalry of a number of birds in the semi-darkness, with
glimmering light from the 'kalian' pipes, and the bubbling of water in
the pipe-bowls, and the boiling samovar tea-urns, all combine to cheat
the birds pleasantly into believing that it is night-time in the spring
song-season.

The Persian poets brought the nightingale much into their songs of
praise of earthly joys. The bulbul, of which they wrote and sang, was
the European nightingale, which visits Persia in spring to sing a