She was highly educated and an accomplished linguist, so
practically all the varieties of Volapuk were alike familiar to her, and
she could make Jean, Ivan, Hans, Franz or Johnny equally at home in her
presence; as, if she could not quite "hit it off" with him in one
language, she could quickly shift to another and talk to him in the kind
in which he could best express himself.

Music was rendered and refreshments served by natives in oriental style
and costume. Her husband was an American, an enthusiastic collector of
ceramics and Levantine _bric-a-brac_, and the owner of a celebrated
collection of scarabs--not bought at the Luxor factory, but separated
from the mummies with the golden lever one must use to acquire these
treasures; because it is the same, whether a collector has them dug from
the graves for gold or whether he buys them after some one else has dug
them. We know the practice here in another form (only ours is on a
silver basis), when we catch our speckled beauties in the mountain
streams with a silver hook and hang them high on a pole at supper time
for local fame and universal admiration. Anyhow, the "real thing" in
scarabs is not to be sneezed at when it is a fact that they have lain
beside a Pharaoh in his grave long before Noah thought of laying the keel
of his _Mauretania_. And don't forget that our first captain must have
had a live pair of them on his historic houseboat, in order that they
should be cavorting on the banks of the Nile to-day. But this indulgence
in "piffle" has led us away from the main entrance, and we must come back
to the floor of the _salon_ in which our reception was being conducted.

Large operations in excavation are now in progress in the East, and
sometimes they "strike it rich," as the boys used to say in Nevada. One
of these companies uncovered a terra-cotta lamp factory, in which were
found literally thousands of small, crude lamps, each with a _strupe_ to
hold the wick through which the oil passed. These were of two sizes, the
small ones being called "wise virgins," and the larger ones "foolish
virgins." There were at least a thousand of them on hand at the
beginning of the reception, and each guest was given one by our hostess.
When it came to my turn, my heart was in my mouth! She asked which I
would have, so I said,

"Oh, madam, give me a 'foolish virgin,' by all means!"

Her smiling face turned at once to stone. She handed me a lamp with a
freezing lo