Mrs. Van. Love and lots of
it.

DICK.

CAIRO, March 11, 1893.

DEAR MOTHER:

In a famous book this line occurs, "He determined to go to that hotel
in Cairo where they were to have spent their honeymoon," or words like
that. He is now at that hotel and you can buy the famous book across
the street. It is called "Gallegher." So--in this way everything
comes to him who waits and he comes to it. "Gallegher" is not the only
thing you buy in Egypt. You ride to the Pyramids on a brake with a man
in a white felt hat blowing a horn, and the bugler of the Army of
Occupation is as much in evidence as the priest who calls them to
prayer from the minaret. I left the people I liked on the Sultey last
Thursday in the Suez Canal and came on here in a special train. It is
very cold here, and it is not a place where the cold is in keeping with
the surroundings. You see people in white helmets and astrakan
overcoats. It is an immense city and intensely interesting, especially
the bazaars, but you feel so ignorant about it all that it rather
angers you. I wish I was not such a very bad hand at languages. That
is ONE THING I cannot do, that and ride. I need it very much,
traveling so much, and I shall study very hard while I am in Paris.
Our consul-general here is a very young man, and he showed me a Kansas
paper when I called on him, which said that I was in the East and would
probably call on "Ed" L. He is very civil to me and gives me his
carriages and outriders with gold clothes and swords whenever I will
take them.

It is so beastly cold here that it spoils a lot of things, and there
are a lot of Americans who say, "I had no idea you were so young a
man," and that, after being five years old for a month and playing
children's games with English people who didn't know or care anything
about you except that you made them laugh, is rather trying. I am
disappointed so far in the trip because it has developed nothing new
beyond the fact that going around the world is of no more importance
than going to breakfast, and I am selfish in my sightseeing and want to
see things others do not. And if you even do see more than those who
are not so fortunate and who have to remain at home, still you are so
ignorant in comparison with those who have lived here for years and to
whom the whole of Africa is a speculation in land or railroads, it
makes you feel like such a faker and as if it were better to turn
correspondent for