they naturally feel more strongly the difference between themselves and their host. This not only renders them less approachable, but it also makes them much more shy of adopting Christian ideas, and in the case of enquirers, who, as I have said before, find it very difficult to understand that our customs are not all regulated by religion, a feeling may grow up that the state of Christianity is not possible to a native Persian. As this book is not about Mohammedanism but about the Yezdi, I have perhaps devoted as much space to the religion of Islam in Yezd as is warranted by my choice of subject matter. At the same time there is no doubt that I have left out a great deal that might have been said, even without going into those details of doctrine and practice which it has been my intention to avoid. I have tried to give some idea of what Islam means to ordinary people in an ordinary Persian town, and I have had to dwell rather more at length on points where there was danger of misconception either through too precise a study of the accurate doctrines of Islam, or through a too superficial view of the result. In doing this I fear that I may have passed over too rapidly the more familiar aspects of the religion, the intense excitement of the spectators and actors at the Muharram games, the mourning for Hasan and Husain, the frenzied fanaticism of the mob after a rousing sermon at the mosques, and the close adherence of many Mussulmans to washing and prayers. This is one side of Shiah Islam, but as it is better known I have attempted to give the other. I cannot, however, leave the subject without reminding those who have to do with Persians of two most important things; first, that there is a real spiritual seeking amongst Mussulmans, and that the presence of worldly motives does not preclude it; secondly, that there is real enthusiasm for their religion in spite of latitudinarian ideas. To the Mussulman, as has been before stated, the system of Islam is everything, and he clings to it as dearly as to life itself, for it represents to him every habit that he has formed, and its cause is the cause of every motive that he acknowledges to be possible.