As we were coming through the garden in the dusk one evening a somewhat ragged stranger accosted us and handed us a long-haired kitten. ‘Mal-e shuma!’ he said. We were surprised, but since we had been making inquiries for long-haired kittens, we thought that some kind acquaintance had heard of our wants and taken this opportunity of making us a present--presents from casual acquaintances being not uncommon in the East. We thanked the man and passed on with our mewing acquisition. But the Persian did not seem satisfied; he followed us with dogged persistence, and at length the thought struck us that it might not be a gift, after all. We turned and asked: ‘What is the cost?’ ‘Out of your great kindness,’ he replied, ‘the cost of the cat is three tomans’ (about thirty shillings). ‘By Allah!’ we said, ‘in that case it is your possession still;’ and we gave the kitten back to him. When you buy, you might think from the words that pass that you had gained, together with your purchase, a friend for life; and even when you refuse to buy, you veil the terms of your refusal in such a manner that the uninitiated would conclude that you were making a handsome present to your vagrant shopkeeper. _A MURRAY OF THE FIRST CENTURY_ THERE are few more curious subjects for observation than the continuity of human life in a given place. Generations of men will go on living on the same spot, though it does not offer them any particular advantages--even though, living there, they must be content with poverty, with insignificance, with a station outside the great swing of the world. ‘Some little town by river or sea-shore’ is all their universe--not theirs only, but their children’s and their children’s children’s from century to century. You are tempted to believe that these anchored people, who cling like limpets to the rock on which they find themselves, are no more conscious of their own vitality than the limpets their counterparts; rather, it is the town which knows that it exists; with living eyes it watches the coming and going of races, the ebb and flow of the tide of history, trusting in its own immortality, and careless whether Greek or Barbarian, washed up to it on the wave of a folk wandering, fill its walls.