They are creatures of a different race.  You treat them as you would treat affectionate dogs.  You beat them if they pick your pockets, as they do every chance they get, and then they offer to show you the boy who did it.  I never got to the point of personally beating mine, but Imam beat a few of them every day.  On one occasion my donkey-boy, Hassan, was angry with me because I would not let him buy feed for the donkey, Ammon Ra, and refused to bring him up when I wanted to mount.  I called to the dragoman, and said: 

“Imam, Hassan won’t bring up my donkey.”

Imam looked at him a moment in silence, then with a lightning slap on the cheek he laid him flat in the sand.  I was horrified.  But to my amazement Hassan hopped up and began to kiss my sleeve and to apologize, saying, “Very good lady.  Bad donkey-boy.  Hassan sorry.  Very good lady.”

We have had three Christmases this year.  The first was in Berlin, the second in Russia, and the third on the Nile—­the day after the fast of Ramazan is ended.  Ramazan lasts only thirty days instead of forty, like our Lent.  The thirty-first is a holiday.  They present each other with gifts, do no work, and picnic in the graveyards.

Between Esneh and Luxor we passed a steamer with some English officers on board, and their steamer was towing two flat-boats containing their regiments, all going to Kitchener in the Soudan.  I used the field-glass on-them, while my companion photographed them.  We waved to them, and they waved to us and swung their hats and saluted.  At Edfou they caught up with us, and passed so close to our boat that the gentlemen talked to them and asked what their regiments were.  They said the Twenty-first Lancers and the Seaforth and Cameron Highlanders.  Then their boat was gone.  How could we know that those gallant officers of the Twenty-first Lancers would so soon lead that daring cavalry charge at Omdurman, and possibly one of those who saluted so gayly was the one killed on the awful day?  It touched us very much, however, to think that they might be going to their death, and we were glad they did not belong to us, little dreaming that the blowing-up of the Maine, of which we had just heard, would so soon plunge our own dear country into war, and that our own fathers and brothers and friends would be marching and sailing away to defend that same “Old Glory” whose stars and stripes were floating over our heads, and whose gallant colors would succor the oppressed and avenge insult with equal promptness and equal dignity.

The temple of Denderah is not, to my mind, more beautiful than those of Luxor and Karnak; in fact, both of those are more majestic, but the mural decorations of Denderah are in a state of marvellous preservation.  I own, after seeing that in some places even the original colors remained, that I quite held my breath as we approached the famous figure of Cleopatra.  The sorceress of the Nile!  The favorite of the goddess