I open this to say that all of your letters have
just
come, so I have intoxicated myself with them for the last hour
and can go over them again tomorrow. I cannot tell you,
dearest, what a delight your letters are and how I enjoy the
clippings. I think of you all the time and how you would love
this Bible land and seeing the places where Pharaoh's daughter
found Moses, and hearing people talk of St. Paul and the
plagues of Egypt and Joseph and Mary just as though they had
lived yesterday. I have seen two St. Johns already, with long
hair and melancholy wild eyes and bare breasts and legs, with
sheepskin covering, eating
figs and preaching their gospel. Yesterday two men came
running into town and told one of the priests that they had
seen the new moon in a certain well, and the priest proclaimed
a month of fasting, and the men who pulled us up the Pyramid
had to rest because they had not eaten or drunk all day. At
six a sheik called from the village and all the donkey — boys
and guides around the Sphinx ran to get water and coffee and
food. Think of that — of two men running through the street to
say that they had seen the new moon in a well, when every shop
sells Waterbury watches and the people who passed them were
driving dogcarts with English coachmen in top-boots behind.
Is there any other place as incongruous as this, as old and as
new?
DICK.
