acknowledged love of some fair zerua, who, in her distant home, was also completing the course of training that was to make her for him the crown and joy, as now she was the aspiration, of his life. The great majority of betrothals took place, either just before the youthful zerdar departed on his first year of service, or during the furlough at the end of that year. Experience had shown that was the most favorable time for putting the momentous question, when the maidens' hearts were softened by pity for the young fellows about to depart on their distant wanderings, to engage in arduous and sometimes dangerous duties, from which their own sex debarred them.
It must not be supposed that the separation was so complete as it would now be under like circumstances. The enormously improved telephone enabled the zerdar, no matter how distant, to converse as freely with his betrothed as if in the same apartment. Imagine such an intercourse continuing for years, an interchange of ideas combining the charms of conversation with those of correspondence. Like conversation, it comprised the pleasure caused by the falling of a loved voice on the ear, the delicate shading of thought possible to the living voice alone, and the mental stimulus arising from the present collision of thought with thought. At the same time it possessed, like correspondence, the power of presenting facts and depicting scenes inaccessible to the person informed, but with the enormous advantage of their being presented while the impression upon the speaker's mind was fresh, while the facts had all the gloss of novelty.
The reciprocal interaction of two minds engaged for
