CAIRO, March 19th, 1893.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
I went up the Pyramids yesterday and I am very sore
today. It sounds easy because so many people do it, but they
do it because they don't know. I have been putting it off,
and putting it off, until I felt ashamed to such a degree that
I had to go. Little had never been either, so we went out
together and met Stanford White and the Emmetts there, and we
all went up. I would rather go into Central Africa than do it
again. I am getting fat and that's about it — and I had to
half pull a much fatter man than myself who pretended to help
me. I finally told them I'd go alone unless the fat man went
away, so the other two drove him off. Going down is worse.
It's like looking over a precipice all the time. I was so
glad when I got down that I sang with glee. I hate work like
that, and to make it worse I took everybody's picture on top
of the Pyramid, and forgot to have one of them take me, so
there is no way to prove I ever went up. Little and I hired
two donkeys and called them "Gallegher" and "Van Bibber" and
raced them. My donkey was so little that they couldn't see
him — only his ears. Gallegher won. The donkey-boys
called it Von Bebey, so I don't think it will help the
sale of the book.
Today we went to call on the Khedive. It was very
informal and too democratic to suit my tastes. We went
through a line of his bodyguard in the hall, and the master of
ceremonies took us up several low but wide stairways to a
hall. In the hall was a little fat young man in a frock coat
and a fez, and he shook hands with us, and walked into another
room and we all sat down on chairs covered with white muslin.
I talked and Little talked about me and the Khedive pretended
to be very much honored, and said the American who had come
over after our rebellion had done more for the officers in his
army than had anyone else, meaning the English. He did not
say that because we were Americans, but because he hates the
English. He struck me as being stubborn, which is one side of
stupidness and yet not stupid, and I occasionally woke him to
bursts of enthusiasm over the Soudanese. His bursts were
chiefly "Ali." Little seemed to amuse him very much, and
Little treated him exactly like a little boy who needed to be
cheered up. I think in one way it was the most curious
contrast I ever saw. "Ed" Little of Abilene, Kansas, telling
the ruler of Egypt not to worry, that he had plenty of years
in which to live and that he would get ahead of them all yet.
Those were not his words, but that was the tone, he was
perfectly friendly and sincere about it.
This place appeals to me as about the best place with
which to get mixed up with that I know, and I've gone over a
great many maps since I left home and know just how small the
world is. So, I sent the Khedive my books after having asked
his permission,
and received the most abject thanks. And as Cromer called on
me, I am going to drop around on him with a few of them. Some
day there will be fine things going on here, and there is only
one God, and Lord Cromer is his Prophet in this country. They
think that Mohammed is but they are wrong. He is a very big
man. The day he sent his ultimatum to the Khedive telling him
to dismiss Facta Pasha and put back Riaz Pasha, he went out in
full view of the Gezerik drive and played lawn tennis. Any
man who can cable for three thousand more troops to Malta and
stop a transport full of two thousand more at Aden with one
hand, and bang tennis balls about with the other, is going in
the long run to get ahead of a stout little boy in a red fez.
It is getting awfully hot here, almost hot enough for me, and
I can lay aside my overcoat by ten o'clock in the morning.
Everyone else has been in flannels and pith helmets, but as
they had to wear overcoats at night I could not see the
advantage of the costume.
DICK.
