In this dilemma I bethought myself of my passport, and fortunately discovered it, together with a number of letters, including one from the Persian Ambassador addressed to “Mūsīū Soon,” and after some difficulty succeeded in proving my identity. The Consul’s cordiality returned in a moment. With the utmost effusiveness he invited me to a large armchair, produced cigarettes, and called for tea. The visit from that moment took the form of usual ceremonial call upon a Persian. As I took my leave, remarking that I hoped he would not seek to have me arrested as a revolutionist, he said, thinking the whole affair a good joke: “Well, you shouldn’t speak Persian so fluently; you see your countrymen are usually so backward in acquiring our language, that when one appears talking as we do, can you expect us to believe it?” I saw him several times afterwards, and he always met me with the air of a man who shares some great and confidential jest with one. About this time, December 1908, the Turkish Parliament was inaugurated, and amid the discord of Turkish bands and through avenues of flags and festoons, the procession of deputies and foreign representatives fought its way to the House at Stamboul, to sit for a few months and prove its futility. The attitude of the Persians, who had been the first to experience the pains and penalties of popular representation, was interesting. It was, of course, popularly supposed that the Persian element in Constantinople and Smyrna--some ten thousand people--displayed heartwhole enthusiasm for the Turkish “Mejliss,” and if the addresses and congratulations of the Persian political clubs were to have been believed, this supposition would have been true. Persians, however, are always alive to the value of expediency, and obviously clubs which, existing only by the tolerance of the Turks, propagated doctrines only to be regarded as heterodox by the Persian Ambassador and consuls, must display conspicuously their sympathy with any popular Ottoman movement. [Sidenote: PERSIAN AND TURK] In the privacy of their own houses, the sarcasm and deprecation of foreigners so near the tip of the Persian tongue found ready articulation.