But Instead Of Water From The White Marble Fountain, He Would Have Desired A Cup Of Wine To Drink Beneath The Boughs Of The Sheltering Trees.

And he could not have joined without doubt or fear in the fervent devotions of the undoubting men, who came here to steep their wills in the great will that flowed about them like the ocean about little islets of the sea.

From the "Red Mosque" I went to the great mosque of El-Azhar, to the wonderful mosque of Sultan Hassan, which unfortunately was being repaired and could not be properly seen, though the examination of the old portal covered with silver, gold, and brass, the general color- effect of which is a delicious dull green, repaid me for my visit, and to the exquisitely graceful tomb-mosque of Kait Bey, which is beyond the city walls. But though I visited these, and many other mosques and tombs, including the tombs of the Khalifas, and the extremely smart modern tombs of the family of the present Khedive of Egypt, no building dedicated to worship, or to the cult of the dead, left a more lasting impression upon my mind than the Coptic church of Abu Sergius, or Abu Sargah, which stands in the desolate and strangely antique quarter called "Old Cairo." Old indeed it seems, almost terribly old. Silent and desolate is it, untouched by the vivid life of the rich and prosperous Egypt of to-day, a place of sad dreams, a place of ghosts, a place of living spectres. I went to it alone. Any companion, however dreary, would have tarnished the perfection of the impression Old Cairo and its Coptic church can give to the lonely traveller.

I descended to a gigantic door of palm-wood which was set in an old brick arch. This door upon the outside was sheeted with iron. When it opened, I left behind me the world I knew, the world that belongs to us of to-day, with its animation, its impetus, its flashing changes, its sweeping hurry and "go." I stepped at once into, surely, some moldering century long hidden in the dark womb of the forgotten past. The door of palm-wood closed, and I found myself in a sort of deserted town, of narrow, empty streets, beetling archways, tall houses built of grey bricks, which looked as if they had turned gradually grey, as hair does on an aged head. Very, very tall were these houses. They all appeared horribly, almost indecently, old. As I stood and stared at them, I remembered a story of a Russian friend of mine, a landed proprietor, on whose country estate dwelt a peasant woman who lived to be over a hundred. Each year when he came from Petersburg, this old woman arrived to salute him. At last she was a hundred and four, and, when he left his estate for the winter, she bade him good-bye for ever. For ever! But, lo! the next year there she still was - one hundred and five years old, deeply ashamed and full of apologies for being still alive.

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