I have come to a curious honour. Ich bin beim lebendigem Leibe besungen.  Several parties of real Arabs came with their sick on camels from the desert above Edfou.  I asked at last what brought them, and they told me that a Shaer (bard or poet) had gone about singing my praises, as how the daughter of the English was a flower on the heads of the Arabs, and those who were sick should go and smell the perfume of the flower and rejoice in the brightness of the light (nooreen)—­my name.  Rather a highflown way of mentioning the ‘exhibition’ of a black dose.  But we don’t feel that a man makes a fool of himself here when he is romantic in his talk even about an old woman.

It is no use to talk of the state of things here; all classes are suffering terribly under the fearful taxation, the total ruin of the fellaheen, and the destruction of trade brought about by this much extolled Pasha.  My grocer is half ruined by the ‘improvements’ made a l’instar de Paris—­long military straight roads cut through the heart of Cairo.  The owners are expropriated, and there is an end of it.  Only those who have half a house left are to be pitied, because they are forced to build a new front to the street on a Frankish model which renders it uninhabitable to them and unsaleable.

The river men are excited about the crews gone to Paris, for fear they should be forcibly detained by the Sultaneh Franzaweeh, I assured them that they will all come home safe and happy, with a good backsheesh.  Many of them think it a sort of degradation to be taken for the Parisians to stare at like an anteeka, a word which here means what our people call a ‘curiosity.’

I go on very well with my two boys.  Mabrook washes very well and acts as marmiton.  Darfour is housemaid and waiter in his very tiny way.  He is only troublesome as being given to dirty his clothes in an incredibly short time.  His account of the school system of Darfour is curious.  How when the little boy has achieved excellence he is carried home in triumph to his father’s house, who makes a festival for the master and boys.  I suppose you will be surprised to hear that the Darfour ‘niggers’ can nearly all read and write.  Poor little Darfour apologised to me for his ignorance, he was stolen he said, when he had only just begun to go to school.  I wish an English or French servant could hear the instructions given by an Alim here to serving men.  How he would resent them!  ’When thou hast tired out thy back do not put thy hand behind it (do not shirk the burden).  Remember that thou art not only to obey, but to please thy master, whose bread thou eatest;’ and much more of the like.  In short, a standard of religious obedience and fidelity fit for the highest Catholic idea of the ‘religious life.’  Upon the few who seek instruction it does have an effect (I am sure that Omar looks on his service as a religious duty), but of course they are few; and those who don’t seek it themselves get none.  It is curious how all children here are left utterly without any religious instruction.  I don’t know whether it is in consequence of this that they grow up so very devout.