'Through Persia on a side-saddle' [‎180] (213/360)

i8o THROUGH PERSIA ON A SIDE-SADDLE
But here again I feel that perhaps I am too severe
Most of the gentlemen with whom I was brought in
contact never appeared to me to do anything much
beyond sleeping, talking, and eating, never reading a
book on any pretence whatever, and not even throwing
themselves heartily into sport.
Yet, of course, the Oriental point of view is not the
European one, and probably they looked upon us as
lunatics for our ceaseless energy, our love of exercise,
and our habit of filling up every spare moment with
some occupation or other.
1 Kismet I' ('It is fate!') is sufficient explanation for
an Oriental to give when he is ill, or when things go
wrong, even from his own fault; and this fatalism is too
alien to my Western mind to permit me, I fear, to be
quite fair when writing of my Persian acquaintances.