Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/270

248 were once erect and nervous and vivid, gay and felicitous and moving, the mysterious flocking humans of thousands of years ago.

The streets roll forward with flocking crowds—dark faces, brown faces, sallow faces; red caps and straw hats and little turbans and smocks and burnous; negroes, Copts, Arabs, women in white veils, women with dark veils; Europeans, soldiers, hawkers, mendicants, post-card sellers, newspaper vendors. Along the centre of the broad sun-swept roadways crash the electric trams; the rubber-tyred cabs and wide-hooded victorias follow pleasantly; the motor-cars proceed; the military auto-cycles pant; and the heavy ox and buffalo carts of the natives blunder along at the sides. There is doing everywhere, happening, being. Voluminous and promiscuous action floods and surges through the city with the traffic. It is life everywhere. And yet mingled with life there is death. There is plague in Cairo, and every now and then the eyes rest on a native funeral procession, one procession, two processions, five processions, ten processions all following one another. They are in every street, and they go past with their strange pomp of death, with the body and the mourners and the keeners and professional howlers. The brightly living crowd on the footways each side of the road pause a moment and think, "Some one has died," and pass on, oblivious, intent on life.

In luxurious hotels gentle and beautiful Nubians