the day while having occasionally to go out into the frosty air, he often gets rheumatism, or other complaint. Another drawback is the moral effect on a whole family of men and women sleeping together in a small space under the rezai, and many call the sandalee “the devil’s playground.” In the guardrooms the soldiers use these sandalees too, the men sitting with their legs tucked under the rezai, while they have sheepskin coats covering the head and body, and in this way they can defy the bitterest wind. It is the one standing outside on guard who gets frozen to death at times. In Kabul and the principal cities time is kept by means of a sundial, but though there are tables printed in Persian of the daily difference between solar and mean time, the time given by them is only approximate, for the dials have been constructed for other latitudes, and they are fixed in the direction of the magnetic north instead of the true one. One day, after ascertaining the true time, I informed the Amir that the midday gun was twenty minutes fast; but he said it was better so, for then they would not be late for midday prayers. Daily at midday a gun is fired to announce the time to the people, and those who have clocks and watches set them accordingly. Comparatively few, however, of the people are able to tell the time from a clock, and many have the most hazy idea of the length of time expressed by an hour or half an hour. This ignorance extends also to numbers, the people generally being able to count up to twenty, and any number above that is expressed as so many “taman” (score) together with the odd figure to make up the number. Some of the people do not even know the days of the week, and have to be told that a certain day is so many days after the present one. Courtship and marriage in Afghanistan differ in many respects from those interesting episodes in European countries, but in no respect more than in the man not seeing the girl until they are married, and she is his wife. Men in Afghanistan are not prone to talk about their wives, or the women of their family, and to ask after a man’s wife is akin to an insult, as evincing some degree of familiarity with her. Under these circumstances a man’s feelings while he is waiting to see what sort of girl he has married are not ascertainable by direct question, but one would suppose that there must be an anxiety bordering on the intense to know what manner of woman it is that must hereafter be called “wife,” for the women vary in face and form as much as the men, and the “pig in the poke” may be as beautiful as a houri, or as ugly as sin, if not uglier in the opinion of some sinners.