“Once a great king, having overcome his enemies in battle, caused the principal captives to be brought bound into his presence. On their arrival they commenced to revile him. The monarch, being ignorant of their language, turned to his minister and requested him to explain their speech. The minister, instead of faithfully repeating their sentiments, said, that overcome with the magnificence of the king, they were expressing their astonishment at his greatness, and imploring his clemency. The king, pleased, ordered their release. The moral is, ‘_It is better to tell a lie that produces good, than to tell the truth which produces evil._’” Thus the tenets of the Persian sage and those of the Jesuits are similar. To do evil is lawful, if a greater good be the result. I fear the evil is often done without the expected good resulting. A visit to the tomb of Saadi, or that of Hafiz, is common among the Shirazis for the taking of omens or “fal,” as they are termed. For a few coppers the dervish who usually acts as guardian to the tomb produces his well-thumbed manuscript copy of the poet, and, after an invocation to the Deity, he thrusts his knife into the closed volume between the leaves. Taking the passage at the top of the right-hand page, he recites it to the anxious inquirers, and, if they be ignorant people, he generally manages to recite a passage favourable to their wishes. Nothing serious is done in Persia without the taking an omen, “fal,” the casting of lots, “istikhara,” or the decree of an astrologer. It was a common thing for a patient to tell me that the reason he consulted me was, that he had put all the names of the doctors of the town in a bag, and mine had been drawn. I also was commonly told that a man had refused his physic because the omen was against it. They will close a bargain or not by an omen, start on a journey or refrain from the same reason; and their action in such little doubtful points as the staking in games is ruled in the same manner. A common way to take an omen (in this case “istikhara,” for “fal” is generally confined to the omen by the book, be it Hafiz, Saadi, or the Koran) is to grasp the rosary haphazard (every Persian man or woman carries a rosary) and count from the bead grasped till the end is reached—good—doubtful—no; the last bead reached being the decisive one.