by Lady Herbert of Lea, so will not go to Syria this year and has all his tents to spare.  I fancy I might be very comfortable among the tombs of the Kings or in the valley of Assaseef with good tents.  It is never cold at all among the hills at Thebes—­au contraire.  On the sunny side of the valley you are broiled and stunned with heat in January, and in the shade it is heavenly.  How I do wish you could come too, how you would enjoy it!  I shall rather like the change from a boat life to a Bedawee one, with my own sheep and chickens and horse about the tent, and a small following of ragged retainers; moreover, it will be considerably cheaper, I think.

November 21, 1863:  Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.  CAIRO, November 21, 1863.

Dearest Mutter,

I shall stay on here till it gets colder, and then go up the Nile either in a steamer or a boat.  The old father of my donkey-boy, Hassan, gave me a fine illustration of Arab feeling towards women to-day.  I asked if Abd el-Kader was coming here, as I had heard; he did not know, and asked me if he were not Achul en-Benat, a brother of girls.  I prosaically said I did not know if he had sisters.  ’The Arabs, O lady, call that man a “brother of girls” to whom God has given a clean heart to love all women as his sisters, and strength and courage to fight for their protection.’  Omar suggested a ‘thorough gentleman’ as the equivalent of Abou Hassan’s title.  Our European galimatias about the ‘smiles of the fair,’ etc., look very mean beside ‘Achul en Benat,’ methinks.  Moreover, they carry it into common life.  Omar was telling me of some little family tribulations, showing that he is not a little henpecked.  His wife wanted all his money.  I asked how much she had of her own, as I knew she had property.  ’Oh, ma’am!  I can’t speak of that, shame for me if I ask what money she got.’  A man married at Alexandria, and took home the daily provisions for the first week; after that he neglected it for two days, and came home with a lemon in his hand.  He asked for some dinner, and his wife placed the stool and the tray and the washing basin and napkin, and in the tray the lemon cut in quarters.  ‘Well, and the dinner?’ ’Dinner! you want dinner?  Where from?  What man are you to want women when you don’t keep them?  I am going to the Cadi to be divorced from you;’ and she did.  The man must provide all necessaries for his Hareem, and if she has money or earns any she spends it in dress; if she makes him a skullcap or a handkerchief he must pay her for her work. Tout n’est pas roses for these Eastern tyrants, not to speak of the unbridled license of tongue allowed to women and children.  Zeyneb hectors Omar and I cannot persuade him to check her.  ’How I say anything to it, that one child?’ Of course, the children are insupportable, and, I fancy, the women little better.