r) with his _tongs_, who is the
sole dentist here. I was amused the other day by the entrance of my
friend the Maohn, attended by Osman Effendi and his cawass and
pipe-bearer, and bearing a saucer in his hand, wearing the look, half
sheepish, half cocky, with which elderly gentlemen in all countries
announce what he did, _i.e._, that his black slave-girl was three months
with child and longed for olives, so the respectable magistrate had
trotted all over the bazaar and to the Greek corn-dealers to buy some,
but for no money were they to be had, so he hoped I might have some and
forgive the request, as I, of course, knew that a man must beg or even
steal for a woman under these circumstances. I called Omar and said, 'I
trust there are olives for the honourable Hareem of Seleem Effendi--they
are needed there.' Omar instantly understood the case, and 'Praise be to
God a few are left; I was about to stuff the pigeons for dinner with
them; how lucky I had not done it.' And then we belaboured Seleem with
compliments. 'Please God the child will be fortunate to thee,' say I.
Omar says, 'Sweeten my mouth, oh Effendim, for did I not tell thee God
would give thee good out of this affair when thou boughtest her?' While
we were thus rejoicing over the possible little mulatto, I thought how
shocked a white Christian gentleman of our Colonies would be at our
conduct to make all this fuss about a black girl--'_he_ give her
sixpence' (under the same circumstances I mean) 'he'd see her d---d
first,' and my heart warmed to the kind old Muslim sinner (?) as he took
his saucer of olives and walked with them openly in his hand along the
street. Now the black girl is free, and can only leave Seleem's house by
her own good will and probably after a time she will marry and he will
pay the expenses. A man can't sell his slave after he has made known
that she is with child by him, and it would be considered unmanly to
detain her if she should wish to go. The child will be added to the
other eight who fill the Maohn's quiver in Cairo and will be exactly as
well looked on and have equal rights if he is as black as a coal.

A most quaint little half-black boy a year and a half old has taken a
fancy to me and comes and sits for hours gazing at me and then dances to
amuse me. He is Mahommed our guard's son by a jet-black slave of his and
is brown-black and very pretty. He wears a bit of iron wire in one ear
and iron rings round his ankles, a