Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/79

Rh favourable construction on all his acts." To demand a pedantic accuracy of musical phrasing in the cheerful flourishes with which a guard is accustomed to herald the arrival of the coach would be to fail in reasonable indulgence for human shortcomings. It is probable that unless the will of the performer were liberally accepted as equivalent to the deed, and his good intentions treated as atoning for a proportion of not less than three or four flat notes out of every half-dozen, the art of playing a post-horn from the top of a mail-coach would speedily become extinct.

Inspirited by the stimulating sound of this manly struggle with difficulties we speed along. Cairo fades behind us into a mere picturesquely-broken mass of houses, dominated to the last by the two exquisite minarets of the Mosque of Mohammed Ali. A few more miles and you catch your first glimpse of the Pyramids—a disappointing one, as first glimpses of all great objects, except