In the first place I have to confess that in England, notwithstanding the noisy, brilliant receptions I had, and all the attention paid to me, no one ever made me any actual proposal with a view to my future benefit, and no one seemed at all disposed to turn to account my practical experiences in the service of the State or of private enterprise. The Memorandum about the condition of things in Central Asia, written at the time in Teheran at the request of the British Ambassador there, had duly found its way to Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister. The gray statesman received me most kindly; I was often a guest at his private house, or dined with him at Mr. Tomlin's, of Carlton House Terrace, or at Sir Roderick Murchison's, of 16, Belgrave Square. At his initiative I was invited to other distinguished houses, for the merry old gentleman was much entertained by my lively conversation and my anecdotes from Asia, which I used to relate after dinner when the ladies had retired. My stories about the white ass of the English Embassy at Teheran, of diplomatic repute, and similar amusing details of court life in Persia and the Khanates of Central Asia, tickled the fancy of the most serious, sober-minded of these high lords, and went the round in the fashionable West End circles. But for all that they saw in me merely the "lively foreigner," the versatile traveller, and if here and there some interest was shown in my future, it amounted to asking what were my latest travelling plans, and when I thought of setting out in search of fresh discoveries. As if I had not been on the go for two-and-twenty years, ever since I was ten years old! as if I had not battled and struggled and suffered enough! And now that for the first time in my life I had lighted on a green bough and hoped to have accomplished something, was I again straightway to plunge into the vague ocean of destiny? "No, no," I reflected; "I am now thirty-two years old, without for one moment having enjoyed the pleasures of a quiet, peaceful life, and without possessing enough to permit myself the luxury of resting on my own bed, or of working comfortably at my own table." This uncertain, unsatisfactory state of things must come to an end sometime; and so the desire for rest and peace necessarily overruled any inclination for great and ambitious plans, and nipped in the bud all projects which possibly might have made my career more brilliant, but certainly not happier than it afterwards turned out.