not grow, the possibility presents itself that
he would be obliged to accommodate himself to the situation and do
without these particular features.

Not at all!

He immediately sets to work to obtain them, crying aloud, meantime,
against the barbarity of a land that does not offer, at this particular
season, the things that are peculiar to his own tight little island.

To the casual observer this may seem a light task that he has set
himself. But it is by no means so. On every hand he is met by an almost
impenetrable wall of difficulties.

The fire he cannot have, for the very simple reason that there is no
chimney in the house.

The beef he can get by sending for it to England, where it has been
purchased from either Northern Europe or America. But where is the great
fire before which it ought to be roasted, by the aid of a "jack," and
with frequent bastings at the hands of a comfortable, rosy-cheeked,
red-armed woman cook, in "Merry England"?

Here, in Egypt, the only fire to be procured will be a tiny one of
charcoal, one of a dozen, but each separate, like the squares on a
chess-board, and not much larger. And the cook will, in all likelihood,
be a wizened, yellow little man, smelling of "arrack," and much given to
peculation.

He may succeed in procuring his Christmas pudding, if he, early in
November, orders the ingredients for it from England, through his
English grocer, and if the ladies of his household agree to compound it.

Then the dreadful question presents itself, how is it to be cooked? A
Christmas pudding of fair proportions needs to be boiled from four to
six hours, and during those hours it wants to be kept steadily and
continuously boiling, or it becomes what the English cook calls "sad."
And so do its consumers.

Now a charcoal fire is a good deal like Miss Juliet's description of
lightning, "it doth cease to be, ere one can say it lightens." And no
power on earth less than a file of the Khedive's soldiers would keep an
Egyptian cook in his kitchen, feeding a fire, four or five hours.

Aside from the fact that he hates and despises, as a good Mussulman
should, his Christian employer, and regards with horror and disgust the
pudding around which cluster the hopes of this Christian family, he has
a great number of little habits and customs that demand his frequent
absence from the scene of his distinguished labors.

He has a "call" to the little shed at the corner of the street where
"ar