In these early days of the Telegraph Department we all had considerable difficulty in getting furniture; the little good furniture Pierson and I had, viz., two tables, came from Baghdad, and was originally made in India. I was delighted to get from my friend the farrash-bashi a magnificent arm-chair made of mahogany and stuffed in velvet. Even the word for a chair, “sandalli,” was not used in Kermanshah, but “kūrsi,” a platform, was the expression; and the rough chairs we got made, of plane or poplar, painted bright green or red in water-colour and unvarnished, and pinned together by wooden pegs in lieu of mortises, were uneasy in the extreme, always coming to grief; and the travelling camp-stools, with no back, were nearly as bad. In Ispahan the natives are clever as carpenters, and now make chairs, tables, and even chests of drawers very fairly. I once had some made by a very clever young Armenian carpenter, and the chests of drawers were very good indeed, but I found that the locks and hinges were _nailed_ on instead of screws being used. I sent them back, and then, rather than buy screws, which are somewhat expensive in Persia, the carpenter cut slots with a file in the head of each round-headed nail, sending them to me and triumphantly demanding his money, supposing that _now_ at least I was satisfied. But on putting a screwdriver to them, I detected the ingenious deception, and remembering the Persian proverb, “If you can deal with an Armenian, you can deal with the devil,” I had to put pressure on the man to get screws really put on. The farrash-bashi’s arm-chair arrived with five pounds in cash, ten loaves of sugar—loaf-sugar was one and sixpence a pound at that time and only used by the rich—several pounds of tea, and twenty mule-loads of barley—not a bad fee. I was surprised at the largeness of it, and found that the farrash-bashi was a “mason,” which accounted for it.