You wonder why they were so foolish as to put them on on New Year’s Eve in that case, instead of on the morning of the New Year itself. The reason is simple. A Persian only puts on new clothes after a bath, and a bath in Persia is not a mere matter of half an hour; it takes half a day, and sometimes a whole one. Some of the richer people have baths in their own houses, but most people go to the public baths. All Persian women and girls love a day at the bath, and will not shorten it if they can possibly help it. It is something like a Turkish bath, and there they meet their friends and sit about in steamy rooms, talking, laughing, gossiping. No wonder they look forward to it, for a Persian girl has a much more secluded and restricted life than girls in Europe and her intercourse with her friends is much less free. One girl of fifteen told me that except for her weekly visit to the bath she had only left her house once in a period of six months, and in her own house she received very few visitors, the calls of her English missionary friends being great events for the whole household. At the bath they wash their hair, dye it with henna, and plait it up in a dozen or more long plaits which hang down their backs under the headkerchief and _chādar_, not to be undone again probably until the next visit to the bath. The henna is a reddish dye and though it does not show on black hair it turns fair or grey hair a carroty red. The newcomer to Persia wonders to see so much red hair, till he finds that this is the explanation. But the boys and girls nearly all have black hair. Boys have their heads shaved, though sometimes a handful of hair is left over each ear, or a lock in the middle of the scalp. This shaving is probably the reason why Persian boys always keep on their caps or hats indoors and only take them off to sleep. Instead of taking off their caps, Persian boys, and girls too, take off their shoes when they come into a room, and this, together with the absence of chairs and tables explains how Persian carpets last a hundred years. They are actually more valuable after several years wear than when they were new. Besides the hair, the fingernails, palms of the hands and soles of the feet must, by Muhammadan rules, be dyed with henna. The richer bathers have all these things done by the bath attendant, but the poorer ones do it all themselves, and the very poor often omit the henna, except on special occasions. Just as no Persian likes to put on clean clothes without going to the bath, so he will not go to the bath without putting on clean clothes. “Khanum, give me a new shirt,” begged one old woman, displaying a ragged one she had on. “For want of one I have not been able to go to the bath since this was new.” But where there’s a will there’s a way, and some people who are too poor to have a change of clothes go to the bath, take off their clothes and wash them, and then wait in the bath till they are dry.