pots of color among all the
black of the other men, and at first sight it does seem too odd to see
evening dress consist of black trousers and a bright-red coat which
stops off short at the waist. But if you think that looks odd, what
will you say to the officers of the Highland regiments? _Their_ full
dress is almost as immodest in a different way as that of some
women, and one of the most exquisite paradoxes of British custom
is that a Highland undress uniform consists of the addition of
long-trousers--more clothes than they wear in dress uniform.

Cairo is cosmopolitan. You may ride a smart cob, a camel, or a donkey,
and nobody will even look twice at you. You will see harem carriages
with closed blinds; coupes with the syces running before them (and
there is nothing in Cairo more beautiful than some of these men and
the way they run); you will see the Khedive driving with his
body-guard of cavalry; you will see fat Egyptian nurses out in basket
phaeton with little English children; you will see tiny boys, no
bigger than our Billy, in a fever of delight over riding on a live
donkey, and attended by a syce; you will see emancipated Egyptian
women trying to imitate European dress and manners, and making a mess
of it; you will see gamblers, adventurers, and savants all mixed
together, with all the hues of the rainbow in their costumes; you will
see water-carriers carrying drinking-water in nasty-looking dried
skins, which still retain the outlines of the animals, only swollen
out of shape, and unspeakably revolting; you will see native women
carrying their babies astride their shoulders, with the little things
resting their tiny brown hands on their mothers' heads, and often
laying their little black heads down, too, and going fast to sleep,
while these women walk majestically through the streets with only
their eyes showing; you will see all sorts of hideous cripples, and
more blind and cross-eyed people than you ever saw in all your life
before; you will see venders of fly-brushes, turquoises, amber,
ostrich-feathers, bead necklaces from Nubia, scarabaei and antiquities
which bear the hall-marks of the manufacturers as clearly as if
stamped "Made in Germany"; you will see sore-eyed children sitting in
groups in doorways, with numberless flies on each eye, making no
effort to dislodge them; and you will visit mosques and bazaars which
you feel sure call for insect-powder; you will see Arabian men
knitting stockings in