His Highness was kind enough to stop and enquire how I was. He evidently remembered--as I did--that at the last big reception of this kind _I_ had been the invalid, for he asked if I had had any return of the illness. I was happy to tell him I was well, and that my greatest wish was that he might soon be the same. While His Highness was speaking. Col. Attaullah Khan, the British Agent, came and stood near me; by the side of such a splendid man I felt a stripling, for I am but a meagre six feet with my boots on. When the inspection of arms was over, His Highness, followed by the Princes and the Courtiers, entered the Salaam Khana and took his seat on the couch in one of the end rooms. He kindly allowed me to be seated, though everyone else stood, and taking some cigars from a box he sent them to me by a Page boy, and invited me to smoke. Presently, the Maleks, and Merchants, and others, who wished to make New Year’s offerings, were admitted. They stood just inside the doorway, and round the lower end of the room. The Court attendants took the presents and laid them on the ground in front of the Amîr. There were rolls of silks and satins; lamps, musical-boxes, Russian boots, vases, Japanese cabinets, sugar, sweets, inexpensive writing-cases, pocket-knives, flowers, and in the midst of the medley I noticed a pair of trouser stretchers. His Highness did not seem very much interested in the presents, though Prince Habibullah occasionally took up an article and examined it. When the offering of presents was completed, chairs were brought for the Princes and they sat down. Why I should have been allowed to sit while the Princes stood, I do not know, unless it were, as I sometimes thought, that the Amîr wished to guard the Princes from the danger of acquiring a too exalted notion of their own personal importance. Prince Habibullah was always courteous, and struck me as having much more _savoir vivre_ than Prince Nasrullah. [Sidenote: “White-beard;” His Age.] At five p.m. Messrs. Stewart and Myddleton were received by His Highness. Chairs were placed for them and tea was brought. After the usual polite salutations His Highness asked Stewart how old he was. The question, no doubt, was suggested to the Amîr’s mind by the fact that Stewart’s hair and beard were silvery white. Afghans, when their hair turns grey, almost invariably, unless they are Priests, dye it black or red. His Highness’s hair and beard were very grey when he was ill, but were blue-black afterwards, and I could not help connecting this remarkable fact with the many bottles of hair-dye I saw in the stores. His Highness was surprised to hear that Stewart was only forty-eight. He laughed when he heard it, and said he thought he must be a hundred.