eberries, and all of the passengers were dirty
and eat things that would make a dog in America go mad. The dog biscuit
that are fed to American dogs would pass as a delicate confection on
the menu of any steamboat we struck, and I had rather lie down in a barn
yard with a wet dog for a pillow and a cast-off blanket from a smallpox
hospital for a bed, than to occupy the bridal chamber of any steamboat
we struck.

And then the ride across the desert by rail to reach Cairo was the worst
in the world. Passengers in rags, going to Mecca, or some other place of
worship, eating cheese a thousand years old made from old goat's milk,
and dug from the Pyramids too late to save it, was what surrounded us,
and the sand storm blew through the cars laden with germs of the plague,
and stuck to us so tight you couldn't get it off with sandpaper, and
when we got here all we have had to do is to bathe the dirt off in
layers.

[Illustration: It takes nine baths to get down to American epidermis
304]

It takes nine baths to get down to American epidermis, and the last bath
has a jackplane to go with it, and a thing they scale fish with. But we
are all right now, with rooms in the hotel, and rested, and when we go
home we are going to be salted down and given chloroform and shipped
as mummies. Dad insists that he will never cross a desert or an ocean
again, and I don't know what is to become of us. Anyway, we are going to
enjoy ourselves until we are killed off.

The first two days we just looked about Cairo, and saw the congress of
nations, for there is nothing just like this town anywhere. There are
people from all quarters of the globe, the most outlandish and the most
up-to-date. This place is an asylum for fakirs and robbers, a place
where defaulters, bribers, murderers, swindlers and elopers are safe,
as there seems to be no extradition treaty that cannot be overcome by
paying money to the officials. I found that out the first day, and told
dad we should have no standing in the society of Egypt unless the people
thought he had committed some gigantic crime and fled his country.

Dad wanted to know how it would strike me if it was noised about the
hotel that he had robbed a national bank, but I, told him there would
be nothing uncommon or noticeable about robbing a bank, as half the
tourists were bank defaulters, so he would have to be accused of
something startling, so we decided that dad should be charged with
being the princip