'You
Come To 'em Very Full Of Your Affairs, And Then You Discover That It's
Only Part Of Their Daily Work To Them.
I expect,' he added, 'I should
have found it the same if - er - I'd gone on to the finish.'
He would have. Break into any new Hell or Heaven and you will be met at
its well-worn threshold by the bored experts in attendance.
For three weeks we sat on copiously chaired and carpeted decks,
carefully isolated from everything that had anything to do with Egypt,
under chaperonage of a properly orientalised dragoman. Twice or thrice
daily, our steamer drew up at a mud-bank covered with donkeys. Saddles
were hauled out of a hatch in our bows; the donkeys were dressed, dealt
round like cards: we rode off through crops or desert, as the case might
be, were introduced in ringing tones to a temple, and were then duly
returned to our bridge and our Baedekers. For sheer comfort, not to say
padded sloth, the life was unequalled, and since the bulk of our
passengers were citizens of the United States - Egypt in winter ought to
be admitted into the Union as a temporary territory - there was no lack
of interest. They were overwhelmingly women, with here and there a
placid nose-led husband or father, visibly suffering from congestion of
information about his native city. I had the joy of seeing two such men
meet. They turned their backs resolutely on the River, bit and lit
cigars, and for one hour and a quarter ceased not to emit statistics of
the industries, commerce, manufacture, transport, and journalism of
their towns; - Los Angeles, let us say, and Rochester, N.Y. It sounded
like a duel between two cash-registers.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 224 of 264
Words from 60306 to 60601
of 71314
