appointed houses, and to eat of the fat of the land. They have a chief who disposes to a certain extent of their gains, and who assigns to each dervish the post he is to occupy on the annual occasion when the house of each wealthy person in Tehran is besieged by a member of this brotherhood, who refuses to quit his position outside the door until he has received his contribution. The dervish pitches a small tent or covering for himself in the street, and makes a small plot of garden beneath it, and there he sits from morning till night, and nearly all night through, until he has received his money. When he has been suitably paid he retires at once, and there is no fear of another taking his place. But if the master of the house be indifferent to the inconvenience of having a spy constantly at his gate, whom there is no dislodging, the dervish after a time has recourse to other measures than the mere display of patience. In the dead of night he blows his horn under the windows of his victim, and the sound of this blast is considered so peculiarly unlucky, that the master of the house is at once beset by all within it, and entreated no longer to defer giving his contribution. The dervish does not have recourse to this extreme measure until he has allowed a suitable time to elapse. He probably thinks it his duty to earn his money by remaining at the gate for some days, and it is also a sign of importance to have a dervish at one's door, and therefore the house-owner is in no hurry to remove him, so long as he abstains from using his horn.
The dervishes who take a vow and roam about the country may be supposed to be influenced by motives of religion. They are often thinly clad, and if they
