I more and more feel the difficulty of quite understanding a people so unlike ourselves—­the more I know them, I mean.  One thing strikes me, that like children, they are not conscious of the great gulf which divides educated Europeans from themselves; at least, I believe it is so.  We do not attempt to explain our ideas to them, but I cannot discover any such reticence in them.  I wonder whether this has struck people who can talk fluently and know them better than I do?  I find they appeal to my sympathy in trouble quite comfortably, and talk of religious and other feelings apparently as freely as to each other.  In many respects they are more unprejudiced than we are, and very intelligent, and very good in many ways; and yet they seem so strangely childish, and I fancy I detect that impression even in Lane’s book, though he does not say so.

If you write to me, dear Tom, please address me care of Briggs and Co., Cairo.  I shall be so glad to hear of you and yours.  Janet is going to England.  I wish I were going too, but it is useless to keep trying a hopeless experiment.  At present I am very comfortable in health as long as I do nothing and the weather is warm.  I suffer little pain, only I feel weak and weary.

I have extensive practice in the doctoring line; bad eyes, of course, abound.  My love to Watts, and give greetings to any other of my friends.  I grieve over Thackeray much, and more over his girls’ lonely sort of position.

I think you would enjoy, as I do, the peculiar sort of social equality which prevails here; it is the exact contrary of French egalite.  There are the great and powerful people, much honoured (outwardly, at all events), but nobody has inferiors.  A man comes in and kisses my hand, and sits down off the carpet out of respect; but he smokes his pipe, drinks his coffee, laughs, talks and asks questions as freely as if he were an Effendi or I were a fellahah; he is not my inferior, he is my poor brother.  The servants in my friends’ houses receive me with profound demonstrations of respect, and wait at dinner reverently, but they mix freely in the conversation, and take part in all amusements, music, dancing-girls, or reading of the Koran.  Even the dancing-girl is not an outcast; she is free to talk to me, and it is highly irreligious to show any contempt or aversion.  The rules of politeness are the same for all.  The passer-by greets the one sitting still, or the one who comes into a room those who are already there, without distinction of rank.  When I have greeted the men they always rise, but if I pass without, they take no notice of me.  All this is very pleasant and graceful, though it is connected with much that is evil.  The fact that any man may be a Bey or a Pasha to-morrow is not a good fact, for the promotion is more likely to fall on a bad slave than on a good or intelligent free man.  Thus, the only honourable class are those who have nothing to hope from the great—­I