Egypt. I wish to know whether I could get 20 or 30 copies
printed for private distribution at an expense not beyond my
means. It would be a mere tract, and about the size of this
letter when folded, 40 or 50 pages perhaps[28]. Will you
ascertain the cost, and tell me whether, in the event of my
continuing hot on the subject half a year hence, you would be
the corrector of the press?... Will you examine catalogues to
find whether there is any dictionary of ancient Egyptian
within my means, so that I might purchase and compare? I
should not grudge two or three pounds for it. Professor Vater
has written on it, but I do not know what dictionary he
consulted. One Tattam has written a Coptic grammar; perhaps
that has a vocabulary, and might serve my purpose. I see
Tattam advertised by John Russell Smith, 4 Old Compton
Street, Soho, London,--'Tattam (H.), _Lexicon
Egyptiaco-Latinum e veteribus linguae Egyptiacae monumentis;
_ thick 8vo, bds., 10s., Oxf., 1835.' Will you purchase the
above for me?"

[Footnote 28: This gives a correct idea of the length of many of his
letters.]

At Mabotsa and Chonuane the Livingstones had spent but a little time;
Kolobeng may be said to have been the only permanent home they ever had.
During these years several of their children were born, and it was the
only considerable period of their lives when both had their children
about them. Looking back afterward on this period, and its manifold
occupations, whilst detained in Manyuema, in the year 1870, Dr.
Livingstone wrote the following striking words:

The heart that felt this one regret in looking back to this busy time
must have been true indeed to the instincts of a parent. But
Livingstone's case was no exception to that mysterious law of our life
in this world, by which, in so many things, we learn how to correct our
errors only after the opportunity is gone. Of all the crooks in his lot,
that which gave him so short an opportunity of securing the affections
and moulding the character of his children seems to have been the
hardest to bear. His long detention at Manyuema appears, as we shall see
hereafter, to have been spent by him in learning more completely the
lesson of submission to the will of God; and the hard trial of
separation from his family, entailing on them what seemed irreparable
loss, was among the last of his sorrows over which he wa