Thus circumstanced, they landed at Alexandria from our ship.  One of our passengers, Mr. Moses S. Beach, of the New York Sun, inquired of the consul-general what it would cost to send these people to their home in Maine by the way of Liverpool, and he said fifteen hundred dollars in gold would do it.  Mr. Beach gave his check for the money and so the troubles of the Jaffa colonists were at an end.—­[It was an unselfish act of benevolence; it was done without any ostentation, and has never been mentioned in any newspaper, I think.  Therefore it is refreshing to learn now, several months after the above narrative was written, that another man received all the credit of this rescue of the colonists.  Such is life.]

Alexandria was too much like a European city to be novel, and we soon tired of it.  We took the cars and came up here to ancient Cairo, which is an Oriental city and of the completest pattern.  There is little about it to disabuse one’s mind of the error if he should take it into his head that he was in the heart of Arabia.  Stately camels and dromedaries, swarthy Egyptians, and likewise Turks and black Ethiopians, turbaned, sashed, and blazing in a rich variety of Oriental costumes of all shades of flashy colors, are what one sees on every hand crowding the narrow streets and the honeycombed bazaars.  We are stopping at Shepherd’s Hotel, which is the worst on earth except the one I stopped at once in a small town in the United States.  It is pleasant to read this sketch in my note-book, now, and know that I can stand Shepherd’s Hotel, sure, because I have been in one just like it in America and survived: 

I stopped at the Benton House.  It used to be a good hotel, but that proves nothing—­I used to be a good boy, for that matter.  Both of us have lost character of late years.  The Benton is not a good hotel.  The Benton lacks a very great deal of being a good hotel.  Perdition is full of better hotels than the Benton.

     It was late at night when I got there, and I told the clerk I would
     like plenty of lights, because I wanted to read an hour or two. 
     When I reached No. 15 with the porter (we came along a dim hall that
     was clad in ancient carpeting, faded, worn out in many places, and
     patched with old scraps of oil cloth—­a hall that sank under one’s
     feet, and creaked dismally to every footstep,) he struck a light
—­ two inches of sallow, sorrowful, consumptive tallow candle, that
     burned blue, and sputtered, and got discouraged and went out.  The
     porter lit it again, and I asked if that was all the light the clerk
     sent.  He said, “Oh no, I’ve got another one here,” and he produced
     another couple of inches of tallow candle.  I said, “Light them both
     —­I’ll have to have one to see the other by.”  He did it, but the
     result was drearier than darkness itself.  He was a cheery,
     accommodating rascal.  He said he would go “somewheres” and steal a
     lamp.  I abetted and encouraged him in his criminal design.  I heard
     the landlord get after him in the hall ten minutes afterward.