ffiyeh, or
delicate silken head-shawl with white knotted fringe; the Arabian
finger-bowls; the little coffee-cups; images of Osiris from the tombs; a
native bracelet and anklet; and, finally, a scarab or two, whose
authenticity is always exciting, like an unsolved riddle. A picture of
these mementos of Cairo would not be complete for some of us without two
of those constant companions of so many long mornings--the dusty,
shuffling, dragging, slipping, venerable, abominable mosque shoes.

HOMEWARD-BOUND

"We who pursue
Our business with unslackening stride,
Traverse in troops, with care-fill'd breast,
The soft Mediterranean side,
The Nile, the East,
And see all sights from pole to pole,
And glance and nod and bustle by,
And never once possess our soul
Before we die."

So chanted Matthew Arnold of the English of to-day. And if we are to
believe what is preached to us and hurled at us, it is a reproach even
more applicable to Americans than to the English themselves. One
American traveller, however, wishes to record modestly a disbelief in
the universal truth of this idea. Many of us are, indeed, haunted by our
business; many of us do glance and nod and bustle by; it is a class, and
a large class. But these hurried people are not all; an equal number of
us, who, being less in haste, may be less conspicuous perhaps, are the
most admiring travellers in the world. American are the bands who
journey to Stratford-upon-Avon, and go down upon their knees--almost--when
they reach the sacred spot; American are the pilgrims who pay reverent
visits to all the English cathedrals, one after the other, from Carlisle
to Exeter, from Durham to Canterbury. In the East, likewise, it is the
transatlantic travellers who are so deeply impressed by the strangeness
and beauty of the scenes about them that they forget to talk about their
personal comforts (or, rather, the lack of them).

There is another matter upon which a word may be said, and this is the
habit of judging the East from the stand-point of one's home customs,
whether the home be American or English. It is, of course, easy to find
faults in the social systems of the Oriental nations; they have laws and
usages which are repugnant to all our feelings, which seem to us
horrible. But it is well to remember that it is impossible to comprehend
any nation not our own unless one has lived a long time among its
p