prepared for prayer, with the fountain which is
necessary for the preceding ablutions required by Mohammed, and the
niche towards Mecca which indicates the position which the suppliant
must take; but it is also a place for meditation and repose. The poorest
and most ragged Muslim has the right to enter whenever he pleases; he
can say his prayers, or he can simply rest; he can quench his thirst; he
can eat the food which he has brought with him; if he is tired, he can
sleep. In mosques not often visited by travellers I have seen men
engaged in mending their clothes, and others cooking food with a
portable furnace. In the church-yard of Charlton Kings, England, there
is a tombstone of the last century with an inscription which concludes
as follows: "And his dieing request to his Sons and Daughters was, Never
forsake the Charitys until the Poor had got their Rites." In the Cairo
mosques the poor have their rites--both with the _gh_ and without. The
sacred character of a mosque is, in truth, only made conspicuous when
unbelievers wish to enter. Then the big shuffling slippers are brought
out to cover the shoes of the Christian infidels, so that they may not
touch and defile the mattings reserved for the faithful.

[Illustration: BEFORE THE LITTLE MOSQUE

From a photograph by Sebah, Cairo]

After long neglect, something is being done at last to arrest the ruin
of the more ancient of these temples. A commission has been appointed by
the present government whose duty is the preservation of the monuments
of Arabian art; occasionally, therefore, in a mosque one finds
scaffolding in place and a general dismantlement. One can only hope for
the best--in much the same spirit in which one hopes when one sees the
beautiful old front of St. Mark's, Venice, gradually encroached upon by
the new raw timbers. But in Cairo, at least, the work of repairing goes
on very slowly; three hundred mosques, probably, out of the four hundred
still remain untouched, and many of these are adorned with a delicate
beauty which is unrivalled. I know no quest so enchanting as a search
through the winding lanes of the old quarters for these gems of
Saracenic taste, which no guide-book has as yet chronicled, no dragoman
discovered. The street is so narrow that your donkey fills almost all
the space; passers-by are obliged to flatten themselves against the
walls in response to the Oriental adjurations of your donkey-boy behind:
"Take heed, O maid!" "Your f