I want to photograph Yussuf for you.  The feelings and prejudices and ideas of a cultivated Arab, as I get at them little by little, are curious beyond compare.  It won’t do to generalize from one man, of course, but even one gives some very new ideas.  The most striking thing is the sweetness and delicacy of feeling—­the horror of hurting anyone (this must be individual, of course:  it is too good to be general).  I apologized to him two days ago for inadvertently answering the Salaam aleykoum, which he, of course, said to Omar on coming in.  Yesterday evening he walked in and startled me by a Salaam aleykee addressed to me; he had evidently been thinking it over whether he ought to say it to me, and come to the conclusion that it was not wrong.  ’Surely it is well for all the creatures of God to speak peace (Salaam) to each other,’ said he.  Now, no uneducated Muslim would have arrived at such a conclusion.  Omar would pray, work, lie, do anything for me—­sacrifice money even; but I doubt whether he could utter Salaam aleykoum to any but a Muslim.  I answered as I felt:  ’Peace, oh my brother, and God bless thee!’ It was almost as if a Catholic priest had felt impelled by charity to offer the communion to a heretic.  I observed that the story of the barber was new to him, and asked if he did not know the ’Thousand and One Nights.’  No; he studied only things of religion, no light amusements were proper for an Alim (elder of religion); we Europeans did not know that, of course, as our religion was to enjoy ourselves; but he must not make merry with diversions, or music, or droll stories.  (See the mutual ignorance of all ascetics!) He has a little girl of six or seven, and teaches her to write and read; no one else, he believes, thinks of such a thing out of Cairo; there many of the daughters of the Alim learn—­those who desire it.  His wife died two years ago, and six months ago he married again a wife of twelve years old! (Sheykh Yussuf is thirty he tells me; he looks twenty-two or twenty-three.) What a stepmother and what a wife!  He can repeat the whole Koran without a book, it takes twelve hours to do it.  Has read the Towrat (old Testament) and the el-Aangeel (Gospels), of course, every Alim reads them.  ’The words of Seyyidna Eesa are the true faith, but Christians have altered and corrupted their meaning.  So we Muslims believe.  We are all the children of God.’  I ask if Muslims call themselves so, or only the slaves of God. ’’Tis all one, children or slaves.  Does not a good man care for both tenderly alike?’ (Pray observe the Oriental feeling here. Slave is a term of affection, not contempt; and remember the Centurion’s ‘servant (slave) whom he loved.’) He had heard from Fodl Pasha how a cow was cured of the prevailing disease in Lower Egypt by water weighed against a Mushaf (copy of the Koran), and had no doubt it was true, Fodl Pasha had tried it.  Yet he thinks the Arab doctors no use at all who use verses of the Koran.