mbling and roofless. The central court
(which shows its age only in a picturesque trace or two) is adorned with
at least twenty beautiful mouchrabiyehs, some large, some small, and no
two on the same level. A charm of Saracenic architecture is that you can
always make discoveries, nothing is stereotyped; of a dozen delicate
rosettes standing side by side under a balcony, no two are carved in the
same design.

[Illustration: INTERIOR COURT OF A NATIVE HOUSE, CAIRO

From a photograph by Abdullah Freres, Cairo]

In a room which stretches back to the garden--and which at the time of
our visit was empty, save for a row of antique silver-gilt coffee-pots
standing on the marble floor--there is a long, low window, like a band
in the wall, formed of small carved lattices. The hand of Abbey only, I
think, could reproduce the beauty of this casement; but instead of the
charming seventeenth-century English girls whom he would wish to place
there, realism would demand the hideous eunuchs, with their gold chains
and scarf-pins; or else (and this would be better) the dignified old
Arab in a white turban who sat cross-legged in the court with his long
pipe, his half-closed eyes expressing his disdain for the American
visitors. The courtesy of the master of the house, however, made up for
his servitor's scorn. The sheykh is a tall man, somewhat too portly,
with amiable dark eyes, and a gleam of humor in his face. One scans his
features with interest, as if to catch some reflection of the Prophet;
but the rays from an ancestor who walked the earth twelve hundred years
ago are presumably faint. There is nothing modern in the sheykh's
attire; his handsome flowing gown is of silk; he wears a turban,
slippers, and an India shawl wound round his waist like a sash. When the
air is cool, he shrouds himself in a large outer cloak of fine dark
blue cloth, which is lined with white fur. Sometimes Signor Ahmed
carries in his hand the Mohammedan rosary. This string of beads appears
to be used as Madame de Stael used her "little stick," as the English
called it (in Italy, more poetically, they named it "a twig of laurel").
Corrinne must always have this beside her plate at dinner to play with
before she conversed, or rather declaimed. Her maid, in confidence,
explained that it was necessary to madame "to stimulate her ideas." One
often sees the rosary on duty when two Turks are conversing. After a
while, their subjects failing them, they fall into