The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1886-09-09
ALAND OF LIARS.
HOW THE PERSlANS HABITUALLY
EVADE THE TRUTH.

A People who Never Hurry-EalsehoOd
and REORGANIZATION as Practiced In the
Orient-A Lesson In Patience-An OPP
timistio View.
ter speaking of their parental and
f.iaI affection, their respect for the aged
and their politeness and hospitality, a
writer on Persia winds up apropos of the
people of the country with the following
phrase: "But as a race, they are very I'M
truthful and procrastinating. About
these two traits of the Persian character
I'd like to say a word. You've OFTEN
heard of the champion liar, and many peo-
pie in the United States even at this pres
ent day pretend to believe that the book
agent and lightning-rod man and Eli Per
kins are the three greatest liars OF the
world. But these people don't know the
Persians. With our liars at home men
dacity is an acquired science, and has
taken years and years and much hard
study to develop, and even then they
often-at least occasionally-speak the
truth With them artistic lying is an eff
fort 1t takes thought and pains to pro-
duce it in its perfection. Not so with the
Persian. The modern Farsee is natural
liar 1t goes against his grain, against all
he holds most sacred in this queer world,
to speak the truth. 1t is born with him,
this inveterate love of prevarication, and
it is bred in the bone for generations and
generations.
ASHAMED OF THE TRUTH
have noticed with the interest the
student of human nature is liable to
feel in such cases, how astonished
the Farsee is when he has caught
himself unawares telling the truth.
/ He is then out of his role, and
feels so ashamed of himself that he looks
Itch I'D 1oh ATp1o
| might after getting off an awful fib.
Even with such a people, however, when
the noble art of romancIng Is carried to
such perfection, moments will arise when
it is desirable to know and hear the truth
And for such occasions the stocks OF
Persian adjuration, oaths, curses and ap-
peals seems almost inexhaustible. One OF
the funniest is Rishe mere Kaffan Kerdil
Literally, May you put my beard in the
winding sheet.) l do not know where
they get their lying propensities from,
these Persians; but that they are the most
invidious, insidious, unconscionable story
tellers in the world there is no doubt.
Procrastination is another besetting sin
of theirs. "Foran mikonan" is their re-
ply when you want thing done at once,
and another great phrase Of theirs Is
Chashon (meaning, "By my eyes, FL do
it," But that means an hour, next day,
next OF ueAG year, W
circumstanceS-neVer at once. To dispatch
a thing and be done with it, to hurry up,
seems to be utterly impossible to the
! Persian, who is lavish of nothing so much
as of time. You give your servant, for in
stance, a tchibouk to be mended, and tell
him you must have it back
repaired next morning. Your servant
knows he will "get fits" if he does not at
tend to it at once, and that he will proba-
bly, get little present if he does. The
pipemaker across the street keeps a little
shop, and has large and hungry family
at home to keep out of the very slender
/ profits of his trade. He knows, too, he
will be paid thrice the ordinary price If he
! does the job at once-enOugh to keep the
! pot boiling for his entire family for one
day at least. Still, so ingrained is the
| policy of hardness with both these gentle
men that you are mighty lucky if you get
your tchibouk back in a week.
A LESSON IN PATIENCE.
The other day had business at the CEN
trail postofice here. 1 wanted to register
five letters and buy postage stamps for
eight other ones. 1 entered the little Office
eight feet by TENN which the registra-
ton of letters Is performed. Four native
gentlemen, seated around huge table, on
which stood a clumsy scale, were extremely
busy doing nothing; or, rather, they chat
ted and took pulls by rotation from COM
mon ghatyan. The chief came in at this
juncture-a very handsome but somewhat
fOppish-lOoking man-to whom was intro
duced. The chief sat down and made the
fifth in this happy gathering. l told them
l was in hurry and wished to have my
letters registered and to buy 16 kerauns'
worth of stamps. They could not under
stand how l could be in a hurry. They
were very polite and amiable, and talked
pleasantly, but it took ten minutes of my
eioquence to induce one of the quartette
to let up on his ghatyan and tend to bust
ness, and it took me just forty minutes to
have my letters registered and to buy
those stamps. The latter he counted over
at least score of times, very slowly and
deliberately, before he consented to release
his hold on them. 1t was not cussedness
L on his part-it was just his natural love
of doing things slowly. His chief sat
there and evidently thought his clerk a
very rash and suspiciously active young
man. And for Persian the young fellow
had really been quick about it.
Many Observant Europeans whom
have met here have assured me that the
Persian is capable of assimilating western
culture and ideas. They tell me they COM
prehend things very quickly and learn
faster than an average American would.
They believe that Persia is destined to
form the entering wedge in Central Ash
attic barbarism and to transform the face
of this part of the globe so it will look
again what it must have looked like at
the time of which Xenophon wrote in his
Anabasis. But in my humble Judgment
this will never come to pass, unless the
character of the people here change mate
rally. For no nation which is so intern
ally slow, which luXuriates in studying
the science OF "hOW net to do it," will ever
succeed in this quickly moving world of
ours. They'd be left leagues and leagues
behind all the times.-Teheran Cor. San
Francisco Chronicle.