the barber's brother with
the basket of glass. The Arabs are so diverted at hearing that we all
know the _Alf Leyleh o Leyleh_, the 'Thousand Nights and a Night.' The
want of a dictionary with a teacher knowing no word of English is
terrible. I don't know how I learn at all. The post is pretty quick up
to here. I got your letter within three weeks, you see, but I get no
newspapers; the post is all on foot and can't carry anything so heavy.
One of my men of last year, Asgalani the steersman, has just been to see
me; he says his journey was happier last year.

I hear that Phillips is coming to Cairo, and have written to him there to
invite him up here to paint these handsome Saeedees. He could get up in
a steamer as I did through Hassaneyn Effendi for a trifle. I wish you
_could_ come, but the heat here which gives me life would be quite
_impossible_ to you. The thermometer in the cold antechamber now is 67
degrees where no sun ever comes, and the blaze of the sun is prodigious.

February 26, 1864: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

LUXOR,
_February_ 26, 1864.

DEAREST ALICK,

I have just received your letter of the 3rd inst., and am glad to get
such good tidings. You would be amused to see Omar bring me a letter and
sit down on the floor till I tell him the family news, and then
_Alhamdulillah_, we are so pleased, and he goes off to his pots and pans
again. Lord and Lady Spencer are here, and his sister, in two boats.
The English 'Milord,' extinct on the Continent, has revived in Egypt, and
is greatly reverenced and usually much liked. 'These high English have
mercy in their stomachs,' said one of my last year's sailors who came to
kiss my hand--a pleasing fact in natural history! _Fee wahed Lord_, was
little ragged Achmet's announcement of Lord Spencer--'Here's a Lord.'
They are very pleasant people. I heard from Janet to-day of _ice_ at
Cairo and at Shoubra, and famine prices. I cannot attempt Cairo with
meat at 1s. 3d. a pound, and will e'en stay here and grill at Thebes.
Marry-come-up with your Thebes and savagery! What if we _do_ wear ragged
brown shirts? ''Tis manners makyth man,' and we defy you to show better
breeding.

We are now in the full enjoyment of summer weather; there has been no
cold for fully a fortnight, and