Coffee made very strong, and without either sugar or milk, is a refreshment in very high esteem with every body; and a dish of it, preceded by a little wet sweet-meat (commonly conserve of red roses, acidulated with lemon-juice), and a pipe of tobacco, is the usual entertainment at a visit. If they have a mind to use less ceremony, the sweet-meat is omitted; and, if they would shew an extraordinary degree of respect, they add sherbet, (some syrup, chiefly that of lemons, mixed with water) a sprinkling of rose or other sweet-scented water, and the perfume, with aloes-wood, which is brought last, and serves as a sign that it is time for the stranger to take his leave. This is looked upon as an entertainment sufficient for the greatest men in the country, only that such have a piece of embroidered or flowered silk thrown over their knee when they drink the coffee and sherbet: and if it is a visit of ceremony from a _bashaw_, or other person in power, a fine horse, sometimes with furniture, or some such valuable present, is made him at his departure. People of inferior rank (or even others, if they have any favour to ask) commonly bring a small present (a flower is frequently thought sufficient) when they visit. Tobacco is smoked to excess by all the men, and many of the women. Even the labourers or handicraft-tradesmen have constantly a pipe in their mouths, if they can afford it. Those pipes are made of the twig of a rose-bush, cherry-tree, _&c._ bored for that purpose: those of the better sort are five or six feet long, and adorned with silver. The bole is of clay, and often changed; but the pipes themselves last for years. Many who are in easy circumstances have lately adopted the _Persian_ manner of smoking the nargeery[438]; which is an instrument so constructed, that the smoke of the tobacco passes through the water before it comes into the mouth. The method of drawing it is different from that of a pipe; and a good part of the smoke seems to descend some way into the breast. The _Persian_ tobacco is what they use in this instrument, which has an agreeable flavour; attended with this further advantage, that, when smoked in this way, neither the taste or smell of it remain after washing the mouth. The vulgar, in imitation of their superiors, have at the coffee-houses an ordinary instrument of the same construction: in this they use the common tobacco, wetted a little with dibbs and water, or an infusion of raisins, adding at times _sheera_[439], to make it intoxicating; and they will draw in such vast quantities of smoke, that when they throw it out again at the mouth and nostrils, it appears surprising where they found room to contain it.