Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1886-02-11
AFTERNOON IN TEHERAN.

1t is the hour OF peace a rosy light
bathes the house-tops, but the stately
avenues leading north and south are in
shadow, and cooled by the water thrown
by the sakkahs. The tender evening
light also rests on the snowy crests of
the vast ridge of the Shin Iran, or
Light of Persia, which scars to height
of $4,000 feet across the northern side of
the plain, but nine miles away. The
evening glow, before it fades into twi-
light, fingers last on the snowy cone of
Demavend, II, 900 feet high, ever pres
ent in every view, like the presiding
genius that protects the capital OF
Persia.
With slow and dignified steps the
Persian gentlemen stroll through these
inviting avenues, engaged in genial
converse. Their long robes, their mas
sive boards, their lofty caps or volumin-
Gus turbans, give them lofty stateli-
ness as they wend along, undisturbed
by the numerous horses or carriages, or
the hideously unkempt and filthy der
wishes who claim aims on account of
their sanctified rags.
At this hour the tea-houses are in full
learn that the national beverage of Per-
STA is not coffee but tea. One would
naturally supposed that country so
near Araby the Blest and the aromatic
groves of Mocha would, like the Turks,
prefer coffee. OF course a great deal of
coffee, prepared in the Turkish way, is
consumed by the Persians, but the fact
remains that they are essentially tea
drinking race, drinking it in vast
quantities, favored with lemon or
tourchee, which is the prepared juice of
the lime, and sweetened almost to a
syrup. The habit is probably the result
of the commercial intercourse which at
an early period existed between Persia
and China, and which, as is now well
known, gave an impulse to the arts of
Persia, of which evidences appear at
various stages of her aesthetic history.
At Teheran the tea-houses take the
place of the coffee-houses of CONSTANT
nople. One meets them at every turn,
of every rank, but all alike resorts for
rest leisure and entertainment There
one may see public dancers, who by
law are now invariably men, although
women of questionable repute contrive
to evade the laws sometimes and ex-
hibit in the harems. The male dancers
are brought up TO this vocation from
boyhood, and invariably wear long hair
in imitation of women, and shave their
faces smooth.
What interests an intelligent Euro
pean more ut these tea-houses than the
dances are the recitations from the
poets. The songs of Hafiz may be heard
there, and entire cantos from the great
epic of Ferdoonsee, repeated with loud,
sonorous meditation, heard sometimes
at quite y distance at the more inspiring
passages, and listened to with enthusi-
astic rapture. Here, too, one NAV hear
the arabian Nights tales given without
any attempt at expurgation. exactly as
in recent translation. The reader
will recollect that the characters in the
arabian Nights are constantly and al
every opportunity quoting long and APP
propriate passages from the poets. This
may to the European appear to be an
atlectation or freak of poetic license
on the part of the author of these tales.
On the contrary, he was simply giving
us another of those traits of Oriental
character, the record of which has given
to those inimitable narratives immortal.
| ity as the finest picture ever given Of
the life of the East, which, after thou.
sands of years, is only just beginning to
feel the Transforming influence of west
ern civilization.
As one continues his ramble through
Teheran at this hour, he sees a crowd
amused by balloons dancing to the beat
of tambourines-an which, if they
do not get all the happiness they de.
serve, at least well fulfil their mission
in ministering to the pleasure of myriads
by their absurd antics and grimaces
Or we see a chained lioness put through
her PAGES or, fatigued by the part she
has been forced to play in life, and UNI
able to Escape from it by suicide, i:
sleeping heavily on the pavement But
one of the most common spectacles o.
Teherarsns the late afternoon-a sigh
whicl1he etNys draws a crowds 9
fnatetllsa III tYitined wrestlers, or athletes
exercising with clubs, at both of which
the Persians are very expert, although
they make no great figure in jugglery-
S. q. w. Benjamin, IN Harper'S Maya.
| zine for January