I have seen this shown in their love of singing birds, and their dandy ways of dress; for some of them are very particular as to the cut of a coat and the fit of a hat.

I have sometimes been interested in seeing them carefully tending their pet nightingales, cleaning the cages, and decking them out with bits of coloured cloth and any flowers in season.

In November I saw quite a dozen cages thus brightened, each with its brisk-looking nightingale occupant, put out in the sunshine in the courtyard; and on asking about such a collection of cages, was told rather shyly, as if fearing a smile at their sentimental ways, that there was an afternoon tea that day in the neighbourhood, to which the nightingales and their owners were going.

These singing-bird-parties are held in the underground rooms of houses, which are cool in summer and warm in winter, and I imagine the company and rivalry of a number of birds in the semi-darkness, with glimmering light from the 'kalian' pipes, and the bubbling of water in the pipe-bowls, and the boiling samovar tea-urns, all combine to cheat the birds pleasantly into believing that it is night-time in the spring song-season.
The Persian poets brought the nightingale much into their songs of praise of earthly joys.

The bulbul, of which they wrote and sang, was the European nightingale, which visits Persia in spring to sing and love and nest.