Those white _nuqls_ are delicious burnt almonds, which seem to melt away in your mouth, the long ones have strips of cocoa-nut instead of almonds, and the little round ones burnt peas. Here are little flat round cakes of _gaz_, a kind of nougat only made in Isfahan, but sent to all the towns in Persia. One variety of _gaz_ contains little sticks of a gum which is supposed to cure rheumatism, a very pleasant remedy.
There is a great bowl a foot across, and over an inch thick made wholly of sugar candy, which has taken the shape of the basin in which it crystallised, and in the middle of which three long sticks of sugar candy stand up high above the top. Such a bowl a kind Persian friend sent to a missionary’s little boy, when he was a few days old, to provide him with “sugar-candy water,” which is considered particularly good for young babies. These are only a few of the sweets, there are too many to mention all. Some kinds are only made in the fast month of Ramazān, and others only at the New Year. The sweets are delicious but they are as a rule very simple and very sweet. So the Persians do not hand them round in little paper bags, nor even in pretty little boxes; they pile them on plates and dishes, as we do cakes; and, as you have seen, many of them are as large as cakes. When you go to visit a Persian, you have not tea and cakes, but tea and sweets. For a quiet call on quiet people, two or three plates of sweets are enough, but at a regular sweet-eating at a big house, one or two great trays will be set on the ground before the guests, each with five dishes of sweets on it, each dish holding about a pound and a half to two pounds of sweets. The Persian women are often very pressing with their sweets, even to the point of putting them into their visitors’ mouths, and in their hospitality they sometimes over-estimate the size of the mouth. Often too, the guests are made to carry home what is left, or a part of it, tied up in a handkerchief. This is so common that where the European is shy of pressing the custom, the Persian ladies will sometimes carry home the remains of European dishes out of courtesy, to show that they have appreciated them. This custom probably exists and has existed in many Eastern countries, and may very likely be the reason why Joseph gave Benjamin five times as much as his other brothers. Benjamin was probably intended to take what was over away with him.