to those of Egypt.  It is not possible for a woman to explain all the limitations to which ordinary people do subject themselves.  Great men I know nothing of; but women can and do, without blame, sue their husbands-in-law for the full ‘payment of debt,’ and demand a divorce if they please in default.  Very often a man marries a second wife out of duty to provide for a brother’s widow and children, or the like.  Of course licentious men act loosely as elsewhere. Kulloolum Beni Adam (we are all sons of Adam), as Sheykh Yussuf says constantly, ‘bad-bad and good-good’; and modern travellers show strange ignorance in talking of foreign natives in the lump, as they nearly all do.

Monday.—­I have just heard that poor Sheykh Mohammed died yesterday, and was, as usual, buried at once.  I had not been well for a few days, and Sheykh Yussuf took care that I should not know of his brother’s death.  He went to Mustapha A’gha, and told him not to tell anyone in my house till I was better, because he knew ’what was in my stomach towards his family,’ and feared I should be made worse by the news.  And how often I have been advised not to meddle with sick Arabs, because they are sure to suspect a Christian of poisoning those who die!  I do grieve for the graceful, handsome young creature and his old father.  Omar was vexed at not knowing of his death, because he would have liked to help to carry him to the grave.

I have at last learned the alphabet in Arabic, and can write it quite tidily, but now I am in a fix for want of a dictionary, and have written to Hekekian Bey to buy me one in Cairo.  Sheykh Yussuf knows not a word of English, and Omar can’t read or write, and has no notion of grammar or of word for word interpretation, and it is very slow work.  When I walk through the court of the mosque I give the customary coppers to the little boys who are spelling away loudly under the arcade, Abba sheddeh o nusbeyteen, Ibbi sheddeh o heftedeen, etc., with a keen sympathy with their difficulties and well-smudged tin slates.  An additional evil is that the Arabic books printed in England, and at English presses here, require a 40-horse power microscope to distinguish a letter.  The ciphering is like ours, but with other figures, and I felt very stupid when I discovered how I had reckoned Arab fashion from right to left all my life and never observed the fact.  However, they ‘cast down’ a column of figures from top to bottom.

I am just called away by some poor men who want me to speak to the English travellers about shooting their pigeons.  It is very thoughtless, but it is in great measure the fault of the servants and dragomans who think they must not venture to tell their masters that pigeons are private property.  I have a great mind to put a notice on the wall of my house about it.  Here, where there are never less than eight or ten boats lying for full three months, the loss to the fellaheen is serious, and our Consul Mustapha A’gha is afraid to say anything.  I have given my neighbours permission to call the pigeons mine, as they roost in flocks on my roof, and to go out and say that the Sitt objects to her poultry being shot, especially as I have had them shot off my balcony as they sat there.