the street, and thinking it no shame; you will
see countless eunuchs with their coal-black, beardless faces, their
long, soft, nerveless hands, long legs, and the general make-up of a
mushroom-boy who has outgrown his strength; you will hear the cawing
of countless rooks and crows, and if you leave your window open these
rascals will fly in and eat your fruit and sweets; you will see and
hear the picturesque lemonade-vendor selling his vile-tasting acid
from a long, beautiful brass vessel of irregular shape, and you never
can get away from the horrible jangling noise he makes from two brass
bowls to call attention to his wares; you will see tiny boys in tights
doing acrobatic feats on the sidewalk, walking on their hands in front
of you for a whole square as you take your afternoon stroll, and then
pleading with you for backsheesh; you will see hideous monkeys of a
sort you never saw before, trained to do the same thing, so that you
cannot walk out in Cairo without being attended with some sort of a
bodyguard, either monkey, acrobat, cripple, or the beggar-girls with
their sweet, plaintive voices, their pretty smiles, and their eternal
hunger, to coax the piasters from your open purse. But you accept
these sights and sounds as a part of this wonderful old city, and each
day the fascination will grow on you until you will be obliged to go
to a series of afternoon teas in order to cool your enthusiasm.

In passing, the flies of Egypt deserve a tribute to their peculiar
qualities. A plague of American flies would be a luxury compared to
the visit of one fly from Egypt. For untold centuries they have been
in the habit of crawling over thick-skinned faces and bodies, and not
being dislodged. They can stay all day if they like. Consequently, if
they see an American eye, and they light on it, not content with that,
they try to crawl in. You attempt to brush them off, but they only
move around to the other side, until you nearly go mad with
nervousness from their sticky feet. If they find out your ear they
crawl in and walk around. You cannot discourage them. They craze you
with their infuriating persistence. If _I_ had been the Egyptians, the
Israelites would have been escorted out of the country in state at the
arrival of the first fly.

England has done a marvellous good to Egypt by her training. She has
taken a lot of worthless rascals and educated them to work at
something, no matter if it does take five of them to call