Glimpses of Modern Persia—I 
thoroughfares are narrow and hare. Rarely 
does one see open avenues of trees such as 
adorn American and European towns. On 
either hand are the endless mud walls, from ten 
to twenty feet high, just such as the traveler 
will have seen, half-fallen, all along the road, 
marking the sites of forsaken villages. 
All the Persian city life, aside from that 
which surges and clamors and haggles in the 
bazaars, is hidden behind these forbidding 
barriers, and it is 
here that the gar¬ 
dens grow. Here 
rise the giant trees 
which are seen 
from afar, smiling 
above the city’s 
h e a t a n d noise 
and filth. H ere 
the Persian’s 
fi ower - wors hip— 
an idolatry which 
no admixture of 
sterner blood can 
exclude from his 
nature—finds its 
shrine and its 
outlet. 
1 have driven 
to pay a morning 
call at the house 
of a rich Persian 
of the old school, 
and been forced 
to abandon the 
conveyance a n d 
pick the way on 
foot for half a mile 
through narrow, 
broken streets, 
between walls of 
most dishearten¬ 
ing blankness, to 
be admitted at last, through a heavy wooden 
door, into a garden where the air was languor¬ 
ous with perfume and the eyes were dazzled 
by such prodigality of color as one never sees 
at home save in a park greenhouse. 
The financial and civic status of a Persian 
may, in a way, be known by his garden. In 
the decoration of interiors he is not exacting, 
and as a matter of fact, not overburdened 
with taste or invention ; though to be sure 
the Eastern forms do not lend themselves to 
any great diversity in the ornamentation of 
rooms. The greatest charm that any apart¬ 
ment can possess is to have windows giving 
upon a garden in bloom. 
The peculiar domestic and social arrange¬ 
ments which prevail in Persia necessitate the 
distribution of the home, so to say, a partition 
of it into departments, such as could scarcely 
be maintained in America, where all the house 
is common to all 
the members of a 
family. In Persia 
the divisions of 
an establishment 
must be wholly 
separate, and the 
gardens are there¬ 
fore distributed in 
such manner as to 
provide a pleasant 
outlook for all. 
I n the more pre¬ 
tentious houses, 
—of the nobility 
or plutocracy— 
the an derun or 
harem is entirely 
distinct from the 
rest of the house, 
oftentimes a 
separate building, 
constructed in the 
form of a hollow 
square, offering 
no view on the 
outer sides, but 
with its inner 
windows and 
doors opening 
on a beautiful 
patio or court, 
with walks, 
fountains,—or at least water-tanks—trees, 
shrubbery, vines and flowers of its own, 
upon which no masculine eye save those of 
the master are permitted to look. The 
extent of this space is dependent wholly on 
the depth of the owner’s purse, but in cities 
an individual holding is necessarily confined 
to a square, save in the case of palaces which 
are usually situated on the outskirts, and 
practically unlimited as to park area. 
A GARDEN AVENUE OK CHENARS 
