CAIRO, March 11, 1893.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
In a famous book this line occurs, "He determined to go
to that hotel in Cairo where they were to have spent their
honeymoon," or words like that. He is now at that hotel and
you can buy the famous book across the street. It is called
"Gallegher." So — in this way everything comes to him who
waits and he comes to it. "Gallegher" is not the only thing
you buy in Egypt. You ride to the Pyramids on a brake with a
man in a white felt hat blowing a horn, and the bugler of the
Army of Occupation is as much in evidence as the priest who
calls them to prayer from the minaret. I left the people I
liked on the Sultey last Thursday in the Suez Canal and
came
on here in a special train. It is very cold here, and it is
not a place where the cold is in keeping with the surroundings.
You see people in white helmets and astrakan overcoats.
It is an immense city and intensely interesting, especially
the bazaars, but you feel so ignorant about it all that it
rather angers you. I wish I was not such a very bad hand at
languages. That is one thing I cannot do, that and ride.
I
need it very much, traveling so much, and I shall study very
hard while I am in Paris. Our consul-general here is a very
young man, and he showed me a Kansas paper when I called on
him, which said that I was in the East and would probably call
on "Ed" L. He is very civil to me and gives me his carriages
and outriders with gold clothes and swords whenever I will
take them.
It is so beastly cold here that it spoils a lot of
things, and there are a lot of Americans who say, "I had no
idea you were so young a man," and that, after being five
years old for a month and playing children's games with
English people who didn't know or care anything about you
except that you made them laugh, is rather trying. I am
disappointed so far in the trip because it has developed
nothing new beyond the fact that going around the world is of
no more importance than going to breakfast, and I am selfish
in my sightseeing and want to see things others do not. And
if you even do see more than those who are not so fortunate
and who have to remain at home, still you are so ignorant in
comparison with those who have lived here for years and to
whom the whole of Africa is a speculation in land or
railroads, it makes you feel like such a faker and as if it
were better to turn correspondent for the N. Y. Herald,
Paris edition, and send back the names of those who are
staying at the hotels. That is really all you can speak with
authority about. When you have Gordon and Stanley dishes on
the bill-of-fare, you feel ashamed to say you've been in
Egypt. Anyway, I am a faker and I don't care, and I proved it
today by being photographed on a camel in front of the
Pyramids, and if that wasn't impertinence I do not know its
name. I accordingly went and bought a lot of gold dresses for
Nora as a penance.
As a matter of fact, unless I get into the interior for a
month and see something new, I shall consider the trip a
failure, except as a most amusing holiday for one, and that
was not exactly what I wanted or all I wanted. After this I
shall go to big cities only and stay there. Everybody travels
and everybody
sees as much as you do and says nothing of it, certainly does
not presume to write a book about it. Anyway, it has been
great fun, so I shall put it down to that and do some serious
work to make up for it. I'd rather have written a good story
about the Inauguration than about Cairo.
I am well, as usual, and having a fine loaf, only I don't
think much of what I have written — that's all.
DICK.
