ront door is opened, the incoming visitor finds himself in the
midst of modern Egypt, the walls of the hall being lined with Damascus
tiles and Cairene woodwork, the spoils of some of those Meshrabeeyeh
windows which are so fast disappearing both in Alexandria and Cairo.
In a recess opposite the door stands a fine old chair inlaid with
ivory and various colored woods, which some two hundred years ago was
the Episcopal chair of a Coptic bishop. The rest of the hall furniture
is of Egyptian inlaid work. Every available inch of space on the
walls is filled and over-filled with curiosities of all descriptions.
On one bracket stand an old Italian ewer and plate in wrought brass
work; on another, a Nile "Kulleh" or water bottle, and a pair of cups
of unbaked clay; on others again, jars and pots of Indian, Morocco,
Japanese, Siut, and Algerian ware. Here also, are a couple of funerary
tablets in carved limestone, of ancient Egyptian work; a fragment of
limestone cornice from the ruins of Naukratis; and various specimens
of Majolica, old Wedgewood, and other ware, as well as framed
specimens of Rhodian and Damascus tiles.

If my visitor is admitted at all, which for reasons which I will
presently state is extremely doubtful, he passes through the hall,
leaving the dining-room to his right and the drawing-room to his left,
and is ushered along a passage, also lined with lattice-work, through
a little ante-room, and into my library. This is a fair-sized room
with a bay of three windows at the upper end facing eastward. My
writing-table is placed somewhat near this window; and here I sit with
my back to the light facing whomsoever may be shown into the room.

Sitting thus at my desk, the room to me is full of reminiscences of
many friends and many places. The walls are lined with glazed
bookcases containing the volumes which I have been slowly amassing
from the time I was fourteen or fifteen years of age. I cast my eyes
round the shelves, and I recognize in their contents the different
lines of study which I have pursued at different periods of my life.
Like the geological strata in the side of a cliff, they show the
deposits of successive periods, and remind me, not only of the changes
which my own literary tastes have undergone, but also of the various
literary undertakings in which I have been from time to time engaged.
The shelves devoted to the British poets carry me back to a time when
I read them straight through without a