The bicycle is in good trim, my own health is splendid, my experience of nearly eight thousand miles of straightaway wheeling over the roads of three continents ought to count for something, and it is with every confidence of accomplishing my undertaking without serious misadventure that I set about making my final preparations to start.  The British Charge d’Affaires gives me a letter to General Melnikoff, the Russian Minister at the Shah’s court, explaining the nature and object of my journey, and asking him to render me whatever assistance he can to get through, for most of the proposed route lies through Russian territory.  Among my Teheran friends is Mr. M------, a lively, dapper little telegraphist, who knows three or four different languages, and who never seems happier than when called upon to act the part of interpreter for friends about him.

Among other distinguishing qualities, Mr. M------shines in
Teheran society as the only Briton with sufficient courage to wear a
chimney-pot hat.  Although the writer has seen the “stove-pipe” of the
unsuspecting tenderfoot from the Eastern States made short work of in a
far Western town, and the occurrence seemed scarcely to be out of place
there, I little expected to find popular sentiment running in the same
warlike groove, and asserting itself in the same destructive manner in
the little English community at Teheran.  Such, however, is the grim fact,
and I have ventured to think that after this there is no disputing the
common destiny of us Anglo-Saxons, whatever clime, country, or government
may at present claim us as its own.  Having seen this unfortunate
headgear of our venerable and venerated forefathers shot as full of
holes as a colander in the West, I come to the East only to find it
subjected to similar indignities here.  I happen to be present at the
wanton destruction of Mr. M------’s second or third importation from
England, see it taken ruthlessly from his head, thrust through and
through with a sword-stick, and then made to play the unhappy and
undignified part of a football so long as there is anything left to kick
at.  More than our common language, methinks—­more than common customs and
traditions—­more than all those characteristic traits that distinguish us
in common, and at the same time also distinguish us from all other
peoples—­more than anything else, does this mutual spirit of
destructiveness, called into play by the sight of a stove-pipe hat, prove
the existence of a strong, resistless undercurrent of sympathy that is
carrying the most distant outposts of Anglo-Saxony merrily down the
stream of time together, to some particular end; perchance a glorious
end, perchance an ignominious end, but certainly to an end that will not
wear a stove-pipe hat.

Mr. M------’s linguistic accomplishments include a fair
knowledge of Russian, and he readily accompanies me to the Russian
Legation to interpret.  The Russian Legation is situated down in the old
Oriental quarter (birds of a feather, etc.) of the city, and, for us at