aside my overcoat by ten o'clock in the morning.
Everyone else has been in flannels and pith helmets, but as they had to
wear overcoats at night I could not see the advantage of the costume.

DICK.

I open this to say that ALL of your letters have just come, so I have
intoxicated myself with them for the last hour and can go over them
again tomorrow. I cannot tell you, dearest, what a delight your
letters are and how I enjoy the clippings. I think of you all the time
and how you would love this Bible land and seeing the places where
Pharaoh's daughter found Moses, and hearing people talk of St. Paul and
the plagues of Egypt and Joseph and Mary just as though they had lived
yesterday. I have seen two St. Johns already, with long hair and
melancholy wild eyes and bare breasts and legs, with sheepskin
covering, eating figs and preaching their gospel. Yesterday two men
came running into town and told one of the priests that they had seen
the new moon in a certain well, and the priest proclaimed a month of
fasting, and the men who pulled us up the Pyramid had to rest because
they had not eaten or drunk all day. At six a sheik called from the
village and all the donkey--boys and guides around the Sphinx ran to
get water and coffee and food. Think of that--of two men running
through the street to say that they had seen the new moon in a well,
when every shop sells Waterbury watches and the people who passed them
were driving dogcarts with English coachmen in top-boots behind. Is
there any other place as incongruous as this, as old and as new?

DICK.

ATHENS, March 30, 1893.

DEAR MOTHER:

I am now in Athens, how I got here is immaterial. Suffice it to say
that never in all my life was I so ill as I was in the two days
crossing from Alexandria to Piraeus, which I did with two other men in
the same cabin more ill than I and praying and swearing and groaning
all the time. "It was awful."

"I have crossed in many ships upon the seas
And some of them were good and some were not;
In German, P & O's and Genoese,
But the Khedive's was the worst one of the lot.
We never got a moment's peace in her
For everybody'd howl or pray or bellow;
She threw us on our heads or on our knees,
And turned us all an unbecoming yellow."

Athens is a small town but fine. It is chiefly yellow houses with red
roofs, and mountains around it, which remind