as he makes out.

But Josiah went on, "I d'no but a camel could carry both on us, I
wouldn't add much to the load, I don't weigh very hefty."

"No," sez I, "you're not very hefty anyway."

But good land! I knew he couldn't rent any camel; circuses need 'em
more than we do.

The next day we all went out to see Pompey's Piller which we had seen
towerin' up before we landed, all on 'em ridin' donkeys but me, but I
not being much of a hand to ride on any critter's back, preferred to
go in a chair with long poles on each side, carried by four Arabs.
Pompey's Piller is most a hundred feet high. Cleopatra's Needles wuz
brought from Heliopolis. One is standing; the other, which lay for a
long time nearly embedded in the drifting sand, wuz given as a present
by Egypt to America, where it stands now in Central Park, New York. To
see the mate to it here made us feel well acquainted with it and
kinder neighborly. But we couldn't read the strange writin' on it to
save our life. Some say that they wuz raised by Cleopatra in honor of
the birth of her son, Caesarion. But I d'no if she laid out to write
about it so's I could read it, she'd ort to write plainer; I couldn't
make out a word on't nor Josiah couldn't.

Cleopatra wuz dretful good lookin', I spoze, and a universal favorite
with the opposite sect. But I never approved of her actions, and I
wished as I stood there by that piller of hern that I could gin her a
real good talkin' to. I would say to her:

"Cleopatra," sez I, "you little know what you're a-doin'. Mebby there
wouldn't be so many Dakota and Chicago divorces in 1905 if it wuzn't
for your cuttin' up and actin' in B. C. I'd say stealin' is stealin',
and some wimmen think it is worse to steal their husbands away from
'em than it would be to steal ten pounds of butter out of their
suller. And that, mom, would shet any woman up in jail as you well
know. And you know, Cleopatra," sez I, "jest how you went on and
behaved, and your example is a-floatin' down the River of Time to-day,
same as you sailed down the Sydnus in that barge of yourn. And to-day
your descendants or influence posterity sail down the River of Time in
picture hats and feather boas, makin' up eyes and castin' languishin'
glances towards poor unguarded men till they steal their hearts and
souls right out of their bodies; steal all the sweetness and
brightness out of some poor overworked woman's life, and if they don't
take the body of their husband not