Reminiscences of My Life in Persia (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1909 Excerpt: ... IV HOW WE LIVE IN PERSIA It is interesting in this strange land to study customs and learn how the people live. We find things funny, things sad, things odd, things old. So different are manners and customs, conditions of thought and living, and circumstances of life there from what they are in America, that I despair of clearly describing the one country to dwellers in the other. My sympathies are with the woman to whom I was trying to explain the changes of day and night. In amazement she exclaimed "What strange people they must be over there to have night while we have day." In my first days in that land I saw so many things so queer, so funny, so laughable, that the natives dubbed me the "laughing lady." Living among these things helps one to understand many things mentioned in the Bible, for it is written that the "law of the Medes and Persians altereth not." So it is that we wonder at the changes that are taking place in these latter days. It is the custom now, as in Bible times, to send a messenger before to prepare the way for the King or any important person. This makes it easy to understand Mark 1:2: "Behold I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee." There are the dwellers in tents now as then, and when we pass them we think of the patriarch Abraham as he "sat in the tent door in the heat of the day." Scenes like that of Abraham buying a "possession of a burying place" for his dead are enacted every day in Persia, when men in buying and selling are bartering over prices. In the fierce chiefs of the wild Kurdish tribes, armed to the teeth and carrying long spears, we see David and his band of warriors when pursued by King Saul, and we think of the ancient "kings of the nations" making war one with another. The sa...