ies that it brought the whole boat to hear
him, and we all gave him backsheesh. But his piety was what captivated
us. I heard afterwards that no fewer than ten of us privately resolved
to give him Bibles. He begged us to visit the college; so the next day
eight of us gave up the tombs and went to the American college, which
was floating the Stars and Stripes because it was Washington's
birthday. We spoke to Dr. Alexander, the president, of our friend
Solomon. He told us that he was an absolute fraud, but one of the
cleverest boys in the college. He was not an orphan. His father took a
new wife every year, and his mother also had an assorted collection of
husbands. He had been to school five years instead of one. He had no
end of Bibles. People gave them to him and he sold them. He had been
in jail for stealing, and on the whole his showing was not such as to
encourage us to help him to preach. Such was Solomon, a typical
Egyptian, an equally accurate type of the Arab. They are the cleverest
and most consummate liars in the world. I wonder that the noble men
and women who are giving their lives to teaching in that wonderful
mission college have the courage to go on with it, the material is so
unpromising. Yet Arabic acuteness makes it interesting, after all. A
pretty little water-carrier named Fatima, who wore a blue bead in the
hole bored in her nose, and only one other garment besides, ran beside
me at Denderah, calling me "beautiful princess," and kissing my hand
until she made my glove sticky. None of us were too old or too hideous
in our Nile costumes to be called beautiful and good. My donkey-boy at
Karnak assured me that I was his father and his mother. He touched his
forehead to my hand, then showed me how his dress was "broken," and
begged his new father-and-mother to give him a new one.

They are creatures of a different race. You treat them as you would
treat affectionate dogs. You beat them if they pick your pockets, as
they do every chance they get, and then they offer to show you the boy
who did it. I never got to the point of personally beating mine, but
Imam beat a few of them every day. On one occasion my donkey-boy,
Hassan, was angry with me because I would not let him buy feed for the
donkey, Ammon Ra, and refused to bring him up when I wanted to mount.
I called to the dragoman, and said:

"Imam, Hassan won't bring up my donkey."

Imam looked at him a moment in silence, then with a lightning slap on