, I would rather wear a sack than try the
experiment again. An uneducated, coarse-minded European is too
disturbing an element in the family life of Easterns; the sort of filial
relation, at once familiar and reverential of servants to a master they
like, is odious to English and still more to French servants. If I fall
in with an Arab or Abyssinian woman to suit me I will take her; but of
course it is rare; a raw slave can do nothing, nor can a fellaha, and a
Cairo woman is bored to death up in the Saeed. As to care and attention,
I want for nothing. Omar does everything well and with pride and
pleasure, and is delighted at the saving of expense in wine, beer, meat,
etc. etc. One feeds six or eight Arabs well with the money for one
European.

While the carpenter, his boy, and two _meneggets_ were here, a very
moderate dish of vegetables, stewed with a pound of meat, was put before
me, followed by a chicken or a pigeon for me alone. The stew was then
set on the ground to all the men, and two loaves of a piastre each, to
every one, a jar of water, and, _Alhamdulillah_, four men and two boys
had dined handsomely. At breakfast a water-melon and another
loaf-a-piece, and a cup of coffee all round; and I pass for a true Arab
in hospitality. Of course no European can live so, and they despise the
Arabs for doing it, while the Arab servant is not flattered at seeing the
European get all sorts of costly luxuries which he thinks unnecessary;
besides he has to stand on the defensive, in order not to be made a
drudge by his European fellow-servant, and despised for being one; and so
he leaves undone all sorts of things which he does with alacrity when it
is for 'the master' only. What Omar does now seems wonderful, but he
says he feels like the Sultan now he has only me to please.

_July_ 15_th_.--Last night came the two _meneggets_ to pay a friendly
visit, and sat and told stories; so I ordered coffee, and one took his
sugar out of his pocket to put in his cup, which made me laugh inwardly.
He told a fisherman, who stopped his boat alongside for a little
conversation, the story of two fishermen, the one a Jew, the other a
Muslim, who were partners in the time of the Arab Prophet (upon whom be
blessing and peace!). The Jew, when he flung his nets called on the
Prophet of the Jews, and hauled it up full of fish every time; then the
Muslim called on our Master Mohammed etc., etc., and hauled up each time
only stones, unti