ahin
women have no other means of locomotion than their little feet. These
beauties, as we may suppose them to be, since they are masked more
closely than society ladies at the Opera ball, wear over their garments
a _habbarah_, a sort of black taffeta sack, which fills with air and
swells in the most ungraceful fashion if the animal's pace is quickened.

In the East a rider, whether on horseback or on an ass, is always
accompanied by two or three footmen. One runs on ahead with a wand in
his hand to clear the way, the second holds the animal's bridle, and the
third hangs on by its tail, or at least puts his hand on the crupper.
Sometimes there is a fourth who flits about and stirs up the animal with
a switch. Every minute Decamp's "Turkish Patrol," that startling
painting which made such a sensation in the Exhibition of 1831, passed
before me, amid a cloud of dust, and made me smile; but no one appeared
to notice the comicality of the situation: a stout man dressed in white
with a broad belt around his waist, perched on a little ass and followed
by three or four poor devils, thin and tanned, with hungry mien, who
through excess of zeal and in hope of backshish, seem to carry along the
rider and his steed.

I must be forgiven all this information about the asses and their
drivers, but these occupy so large a space in life at Cairo that they
are entitled to the importance which they really possess.

ANCIENT EGYPT

The solemn title must not terrify the reader. M. Ernest Feydeau's book
is, in spite of its title, most attractive reading. In his case science
does not mean weariness, as happens too often. The author of "Funeral
Customs and Sepulture among the Ancient Nations" desired to be
understood of all, and everybody may profit by his long and careful
researches. He has not sealed his work with seven seals, as if it were
an apocalyptic volume, to be understood by adepts only; he has sought
clearness, distinctness, colour, and he has given to archaeology the
plastic form which it almost always lacks. What is the use of heaping
together materials in disorder, stones which are not made to form part
of a building, colours which are not turned into pictures? What does the
public, for whom, after all, books are meant, get out of so many obscure
works, cryptic dissertations, deep researches, with which learned
authors seem to mask entrances, as the ancient Egyptians--the comparison
is a proper one here--masked the en