[29] An experiment I never regretted. Mirza Yusuf was with me for nine months, and I found him faithful, truthful, and trustworthy, very hard-working, minimising hardships and difficulties, always cheerful, and with an unruffled temper, his failings being those of a desk-bred man transplanted into a life of rough out-doorishness.
[30] It is new to me, however, and may be new to a large proportion of the "untravelled many" for whom I write.
[31] Major-General Sir R. Murdoch Smith, K.C.M.G., late Director of the Persian section of the Indo-European telegraph, read a very interesting paper upon it before the Royal Scottish Geographical Society on December 13, 1888,—a Sketch of the History of Telegraphic Communication between the United Kingdom and India.
[32] I can imagine now what a hellish laugh that was with which "they laughed Him to scorn."
I was a month in Julfa, but never saw anything more of Isfahan, which is such a fanatical city that I believe even so lately as last year none of the ladies of the European community had visited it, except one or two disguised as Persian women.
[33] Since my visit Mr. Preece, then, and for many previous years, the superintending electrician of this section of the Indo-European telegraph, has been appointed Consul, the increasing dimensions of English interests and the increasing number of resident British subjects rendering the creation of a Consulate at Isfahan a very desirable step.
[34] A few weeks later she died, her life sacrificed, I think, to over-study of a difficult language, and the neglect of fresh air and exercise.
[35] These sentences were written nearly a year ago, but many subsequent visits to missions have only confirmed my strong view of the very trying nature of at least the early period of a lady missionary's life in the East, and of the constant failure of health which it produces; of the great necessity there is for mission boards to lay down some general rules of hygiene, which shall include the duty of riding on horseback, for more rigorous requirements of vigorous physique in those sent out, and above all, that the natural characteristics of those who are chosen to be "epistles of Christ" in the East shall be such as will not only naturally and specially commend the Gospel, but will stand the wear and strain of difficult circumstances.
[36] Nearly all my non-registered letters to England failed to reach their destination.
[37] I have written nothing about this fast-increasing sect of the Bābis, partly because being a secret sect, I doubt whether the doctrines which are suffered to leak out form really any part of its esoteric teaching, and partly because those Europeans who have studied the Bābis most candidly are diametrically opposed in their views of their tenets and practice, some holding that their aspirations are after a purer life, while others, and I think a majority, believe that their teachings are subversive of morality and of the purity of domestic life.