Page:The Dial vol. 15 (July 1 - December 16, 1893).djvu/77

1893.]

 a small child); she had only one chair, which she gave me, as the stranger; seating our old friend on the table, she mounted to the top of a high ladder herself, from whence she chattered and laughed with the happy air of one who is sure to please. Miss Raincock had once received a note from Gibson,—'That poor American girl has fever, come and nurse her,' so she had packed up her old carpet-bag and gone at once to obey the order, thus forming a friendship for life."

But Miss North's turn for satirical portraiture was by no means reserved for Americans. Among the most amusing of her "Innocents Abroad" was a Frenchman, a fellow-passenger on the Nile boat, who was, she rather naïvely complains, "absurdly national and unlike us in everything." Curiously enough, Monsieur, on his side, seems to have been observing his English companions, and making, mutatis mutandis, the same conclusions about them. Says Miss North:

Miss North visited Egypt in 1865, and she gives a lively account of the country and people and of her own experiences. The route from Alexandria ("a nasty, mongrel, mosquito-ish place") to Cairo reminded her of the fens of Ely; but the country was richly cropped with cotton and Indian corn, with scarcely a tree to break the monotony of the view, and but few villages. The cottages were merely square blocks of hardened mud, windowless and with the flat roofs covered with pigeons, chickens, and cats; primitive ploughs, like the ancient models in old Egyptian carvings, were scratching the rich soil.

Books might be filled, says Miss North, with the architectural wonders of Cairo, its elaborate arabesques, and lacelike patterns in stone-work, plaster, and wood-carving. The tombs outside the city were the greatest gems of all, though they were only visited by flights of falcons or stray Arab wanderers. Europeans seemed popular with the people, who were fond of showing off any words they knew. Miss North's donkeyman, like most of his tribe, was a special linguist. He knew "a few words of many languages, and made the most of them by transposing and reversing their order in a sentence; for instance, 'gentleman like donkey,' 'no gentleman like donkey,' 'donkey no like gentleman.' He told his beast where to go, and the clever creature trotted off right or left accordingly. 'Donkey speak English,' then the donkey always put its ears back and kicked out behind,"—a proceeding reminding one of the intelligent animal that carried Silas Wegg to "Boffinses Bower" on a memorable occasion.

The author confesses to having regarded things Egyptian "from a purely picturesque point," and was scolded for this by the Cairo clergyman's wife:

The start from Cairo was made the day after Christmas, and the author's record of the ensuing Nile voyage is studded with characteristic bits of vivid, semi-humourous description. At Luxor, Miss North visited the eccentric Lady Duff Gordon, whom she had seen twenty-ﬁve years before. Lady Lucie was picturesquely installed in some rooms raised up amongst the pillars of an old temple, "like a second story":

Later, at Karnak, Miss North was rather