Note 228 — PERSIAN STORIES.

Here the author is employing the various processes of the Eastern bath in describing the chattering of three ladies who have “foregathered” there.—“The Persian ladies,” says Sir R. Ker Porter, in his Travels in Georgia, Persia, etc., vol. i, 233, “regard the bath as the place of their greatest amusement; they make appointments to meet there, and often pass seven or eight hours together in the carpeted saloon, telling stories, relating anecdotes, eating sweetmeats, sharing their kalyouns [pipes] and embellishing their beautiful forms with all the fancied perfection of the East; dyeing their hair and eyebrows; and curiously staining their fair bodies with a variety of fantastic devices, not unfrequently with the figures of trees and birds, the sun, moon, and stars.”