but your dog of a servant----"

That settles it. Having obtained the money he marches out without a
thank you or goodbye.

The Dahomey people are the strangest of all. The first greeting of one
amazon to the other is to slap her face. The visitor always slaps the
hostess first, and if the visit is welcome the visitor gets a cuff on
each cheek, and if it is not convenient to receive the visitor no slap
is given in return.

But the palm is left to the American for a whole-souled disregard of the
feelings of others. The show was brought here for the special benefit of
the visitor; he has paid his money, and he has the right to do as he
pleases.

If the sedan chair bearers happen to pass with some fat man for a
passenger, the whole street is in an uproar of English comment meant to
be humorous. Then the ordinary American visitor seems to think it his
prerogative to point at the foreign contingent and say things aloud
about them that would secure physical retaliation if the object of the
remark were a citizen of the United States instead of a guest of the
nation.

_CHAPTER XI_

A STARTLING MYSTERY

The next day was what the boys called African day; that is, they
intended to see all that was to be seen from Dahomey to Nubia and
Soudan. Fanny was to spend the morning in the panoramas of the Burnese
Alps and the volcano Kilaueau. At noon she would meet them at one of the
inns.

The boys wandered about for some time in search of adventure. Over in
the street of Cairo there were two peculiar structures that looked like
inverted soup-bowls. There was a three cornered aperture In the front of
each where men and women could be seen crawling in and out. Over one of
these doors was a placard on which was painted, "See the 18 months old
Soudanese baby dance. The only dance of the kind on earth." Over the
door of the other one was a placard on which was printed "Only 25c to
see the great Nubian terpsichorean evolutions." Two or three men would
come up, stand awhile and listen at the curious sounds from within,
resembling very much the noise made by a pack of curs after a rabbit
they did not hope to catch; or, perhaps, more like a plantation jamboree
when all the strings of the banjo were broken but one and it had been
mended twice.

The people came to see the sights, and here was a mysterious something
they might regret a lifetime in the missing. Our two boys required no
mental balancing of any nice points of propri