ple would
spoil Cairo for me, although at first I was disappointed. Most places
have to be lived up to, especially one like Cairo, whose attractions
are vaunted by every tourist, every woman of fashion, every scholar,
every idle club-man, everybody, either with brains or without. I
wondered how it _could_ be all things to all men. I simply thought it
was the fashion to rave about it, and I was sick of the very sound of
its name before I came. It was too perfect. It aroused the spirit of
antagonism in me.

First of all, when you arrive in Cairo you find that it is very, very
fashionable. You can get everything here, and yet it is practically
the end of the world. Nearly everybody who comes here turns around and
goes back. Few go on. Even when you go up the Nile you must come back
to Cairo. There is really nowhere else to go.

You drive through smart English streets, and when you find yourself at
Shepheard's you are at the most famous hotel in the world; yet,
strange to say, in spite of its size, in spite of the thousands of
learned, famous, titled, and distinguished people who have been here,
in spite of its smartness and fashion, it is the most homelike hotel I
ever was in. Everybody seems to know about you and to take an interest
in what you are doing, and all the servants know your name and the
number of your room, and when you go out into the great corridor, or
when you sit on the terrace, there is not a trace of the supercilious
scrutiny which takes a mental inventory of your clothes and your looks
and your letter of credit, which so often spoils the sunset for you at
similar hotels.

Ghezireh Palace is even more fashionable than Shepheard's. Here we
have baronets and counts and a few earls. But there they have dukes
and kings and emperors, yet there is a gold-and-alabaster mantelpiece
which takes your mind even from royalty, it is so beautiful. Ghezireh
is situated on the Nile, half an hour's drive away, so that in spite
of its royal atmosphere it never will take the place of Shepheard's.
Here you see all the interesting people you have heard of in your
life. You trip over the easels of famous artists in an angle of the
narrow street, and many famous authors, scientists, archaeologists,
and scholars are here working or resting.

Yesterday I was told that four Americans who stood talking together on
the terrace represented two hundred millions of dollars. At dinner the
red coats of the officers make brilliant s