He who travels à force de bras may regulate his sight-seeing as exactly as the moneyed tourist by clinging to one fixed plan—to fall penniless and be forced to seek employment only in those cities with which he would become well acquainted. In all north Africa no spot offered more attractions for an extended stay than Cairo. Once arrived there, whatever the fates had in store for me, I should be on chosen ground. At all hazards I must reach Cairo before I “went broke.”

On my second morning in Alexandria, I repaired to the railway station, only to find that I had delayed my departure a bit too long. The third-class fare to the capital was low, but, unfortunately, just three piastres more than I possessed. Should I take train as far as possible and finish the journey on foot and penniless, or should I save the money on hand for food en route and tramp the entire distance?

Pondering the question, I dropped into a bench on the Place Mohammed Ali, and fell to whittling a stick. A countryman, strolling by, paused to stare, and sitting down on the far end of the bench, watched me intently. Now a Frank is no more of a novelty in Alexandria than in Kansas City, even though in ragged garb; for, given a great port anywhere on the earth’s surface, you will find Jack Tar, at least, rambling penniless and forlorn through her streets. Either the native was astonished to see a man work, even with his hands, when he was not paid to do so, or the knife had attracted his attention. Inch by inch, he slid along the bench.

“Very good knife, kwice cateer,” he murmured.

Two months in the Arab world had given me vocabulary enough for simple conversations. “Aywa,” I answered, tossing away the stick and closing the knife.

The fellah gave a gasp of delight.

“But it shuts up, like a door,” he cried.

I opened and closed it several times for his edification; then slid down in my seat, my thoughts elsewhere.

“You sell it?” grinned the Arab.

“Eh!” I gasped, straightening up in astonishment, “you—”

“I’ll give you five piastres,” wheedled the peasant, “gkamsa tarifa.”

“Take it!” I cried, and, grasping the coin he held out to me, I dashed away to the station.

A half-hour later I was speeding southward across the fertile delta of the Nile. What a contrast was this land to that I had so lately left behind! Every few miles the train halted at a bustling city; between them mound-like fellaheen villages and well-cultivated fields raced northward. Inside the car—of American pattern—prosperous, well-groomed natives perused the latest newspapers and smoked world-famous cigarettes with the blasé air of Parisian commuters. Even the half-blind victims of ophthalmia leaned back in their seats in the perfect contentment of well-fed creatures. An eyeless pre-adamite in one corner roared with laughter at the sallies of his companions. Far more at ease was he, for all his affliction, than I, with neither friend nor acquaintance in the length and breadth of the continent.

The Oriental panorama grew dim. One could with difficulty distinguish in this ultra-flat country, where every object stood out sharply against the horizon, between a distant village and a reclining water-buffalo, nearer at hand. The western sky turned ruddy a moment, dulled to a brown, and the darkness that falls so quickly in tropical countries left me to stare at my own face beyond the window. An impressive reflection indeed! A figure to inspire prospective employers with confidence! The lights that were springing up across the plain were of no village where inhabitants welcomed strangers with open arms. Every click of the wheels brought me nearer the metropolis of Africa, a great city, of which I knew little more than the name, and where I should soon be set adrift in the darkness with the ludicrous sum of ten cents in my pocket! Perhaps in all Cairo there was not another penniless adventurer of my race? Even if there were, and a “vagabond’s retreat” somewhere among these long rows of streets that flashed by as those of London in approaching St. Pancras, small chance had I of finding it. For, were my Arabic as fluent as my English, no policeman could direct me to so unconventional a quarter.

The train halted in a vast, domed station. A mighty press of humanity swept me through the waiting-rooms and out upon a brightly-lighted square. There the screaming throng of hackmen, porters, donkey boys, and hotel runners drove me to take refuge behind a station pillar. I swung my knapsack over my shoulder and gazed, utterly undecided, across the human sea.

Suddenly a voice sounded above the roar:—“Heh! Landsmann, wohin?” I stared eagerly about me, for this simple greeting, properly accented, is the password of the German tramp wherever he wanders. Under a neighboring arc-light stood a young man of ruddy, sunburned countenance, in a stout, if somewhat ragged, suit and a cloth cap. At my sign of recognition, he dived into the crowd and fought his way to my side.

“Ah!” he shouted, in German, “I knew only one of the boys would blow in with a knapsack and a corduroy suit! Where are you turning up from? Just got in from Zagazig myself. Been down there grubbing up some cash. How long have you been away? Business any good down at the coast? Don’t believe it is. Cairo’s the place for easy winnings. Bet you blew in without a piastre? Give ’em the stony face on the train? I did, though a fellow down in Zagazig ticketed me. Gave me the cash, the wise one, and of course I planted it and stared them off.”

Had I not already served an apprenticeship in German slang, I should have come off with a very indistinct notion of the recent activities of my new acquaintance. I broke in as soon as possible to assure him that I had never dared to hope that civilization was so up-to-date in Egypt that one could “beat his way” on the railroads, and to protest that I could doubly deny his charge of having “eingeblasen” without a piastre.

“It’s my first trip to Cairo,” I concluded. “I bought my own ticket—”

“What!” roared the German, “Ticketed yourself! Lieber Gott, aber du bist roh! Tick—But then,” he continued, in a hushed voice, “now I think of it, so did I! Schafskopf, ja! I paid good money to come to Cairo the first time! Höllespein, what a greenhorn I was!”

As he talked, we had left behind the howling throng. No need to ask where he was leading me.

“There’s an Asile in Cairo,” he put in, “but you’re too late to-night. You’ll meet all die Kamaraden where we’re going, for they’re most of them ausgespielt with the churchman and can’t talk the Asile tickets out of him.”

We crossed a rectangular square where street cars clanged their way through a multitude, and turned down a street flanked by brightly-lighted shops.

“It’s the Moosky,” said the German. “Good old lane. Many a piastre I’ve picked up in her.”

He dodged into a side alley, jogged over a street, and entered the headquarters of “die Kameraden.” It was a wine shop with connecting kitchen, on the lower floor of a four-story building; just such a rendezvous as one finds in Germany. A shuffling Jew was drawing beer and wine for several groups of noisy faranchees at the tables, to the accompaniment of a continual jabber in Yiddish to which the tipplers replied, now and then, in German. A long-unwashed female wandered in from the back room with a steaming plate of meat and potatoes.

“Der Jude has lodgings,” said my companion, pointing at the ceiling. “Three small piastres. You can still eat a small piastre worth.”

Great impression two and a half cents would have made on an all-day appetite! Almost before I realized it, I had called for a supper that took my last copper.

By the time I finished eating, the “comrades” were demanding the biography of “der Ankömmling.” As all the party spoke German, I gave an abbreviated account of myself in that language.

“And what countryman are you?” asked a youth at a neighboring table.

“Ich bin Amerikaner.”

The entire party, the Jew included, burst into uproarious laughter so suddenly that two black urchins, peering in upon us, took to their heels.

“Amerikaner! Ja! Ja!” shrieked the merrymakers, “Freilich! We are all Americans. But what are you when you tell the truth to your good comrades? Amerikaner! Ha! Ha!—”

The cane of the first speaker beat a tattoo on the table and the mirth subsided. Plainly, he was a man of authority in the gathering.

“Now, then,” he cried, as though I were entitled by the rules of “the union” to enter two answers, “what country are you from?”

I repeated my first assertion.

“So you are an American, rheally?” he demanded, suddenly, in clear English, though with a marked accent.

A long reply in my own tongue upset his conviction that I should not be able to understand him. The others, however, grinned skeptically and fell to chattering again, glancing up from time to time to mutter, “Amerikaner! Ja, gewiss.” I scraped up a half-pipe of tobacco from the corners of a pocket, and fell asleep over the fumes.

A whining voice sounded in my ear:—“H’raus, Hop! Will mich einschliessen!” I opened my eyes to find the Jew bending over me. The room was nearly empty. Of the few “comrades” who remained one was the youth who had addressed me in English. I caught up my bundle and turned towards the door.

“Du bist, aber, ganz kaput?” demanded the young man, “have you no money?”

“No.”

He rose and followed after me.

“If you are ein richtiger Amerikaner,” he said, “I can show you where to pick up the price of a lodging.”

I nodded. The youth called to the Hebrew to leave his door unlocked, and led the way down the Moosky, across the square, and along a street that flanked a wooded park.

“Esbekieh Gardens, those,” he said. “I’m taking you to the American Mission Hospital. There are eight American preachers there, but your best chance now is Reverend ——. He lives in the third story, first door to the right of the stairway. You will find him studying. He studies until two in the morning. Knock on the door once. He won’t answer; but push it open and begin a hard-luck story right away. Now don’t tell him that you’ve just come to Egypt, nor that you’re a sailor; and, if he asks you if you speak German, say no. Tell him you are a civil engineer, or a plate-layer, or a mason, and that you’ve just walked down from Central Africa—your clothes fit that—and that you could get no work there, or—or that you got sick; yes, that’s better, for he’s an old wise one and knows there’s plenty of work up the river. Tell him you speak only English and that you are an American—that is if you are—and he will give you ten piastres. If you’re not sure you can talk English without a foreign accent—I can’t tell whether you do or not—well, I wouldn’t disturb the old man. He doesn’t like Germans.”

The youth pointed out a door of the Mission and slipped into the blacker night of one of her pillars. I stepped inside, and, mounting to the first landing, sat down to think matters over. The night air of January was too cold to sleep out of doors even should I succeed in hiding where the patrol could not rout me out. But to come at midnight to disturb an aged missionary with a stereotyped tale of woe! Yet I knew the bitter hopelessness of looking for work after a night in the streets, and “a deep breath for breakfast.” Work? Why, of course! Just the point! I must find work before I left Cairo; why could I not ask for a small loan and pay it back?

I continued up the stairs and knocked on the door that had been indicated. There was no response, but a tiny thread of light showed on the threshold. I stepped inside. In the far corner of a small room, a white-haired man closed, over a finger, the book he was reading, and turned the light of a student lamp full upon me. I began my story—not the one the German had plotted—and stated my case briefly. To my dismay, the word “borrow” fell flat.

“I rarely,” said the old man, in a voice that would have chorded well with the last key of a piano, “I rarely give money to a man who has just come to the country. What business has he here without sufficient funds to establish himself? I have never given money to sailors. I know their ways too well. But after long months of daily visits from ‘Americans’ who speak English as if they had learned it in the slums of Berlin, I am glad to see a real American again; though sorry to find that he is without money, and still more so that he is a sailor. Here is a half-dollar”—handing me a ten-piastre piece—“I hope you will not drink quite all of it up. What state are you from?”

“Michigan. You understand I am only borrowing this until I can find work—”

“Young man,” said the missionary, rising to his feet, “you already have the money—the amount I give, if I give at all. No additions to your tale will cause me to offer more. Why, then, attempt to raise false hopes within my breast? So you are from Michigan? I am from Pittsburg. Good night,” and without giving me time for reply, he sat down and lost himself in the pages of his book.

“You were gone a long time,” said the German, as I emerged from the doorway. “You couldn’t show him you were an American?”

I held out the coin in my hand.

“Ei! Gott!” cried my companion, “you got it? You are an American, then, a genuine American! It’s the test I always apply. He can tell an American at his first three words.”

“But why didn’t the crowd believe me?” I demanded.

“Ach!” burst out the youth, “Here in Cairo all the boys are Americans. We have Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Poles, Norwegians, all sorts in the union, and everyone is an ‘American’—except among the comrades. And not three of them ever saw the United States! It is because, of all the foreigners in Egypt, the Americans are the easiest and the most generous. Then you know what a bad reputation Germans have as beggars—all turning out on their Wanderjahre? The Germans here will help us. Yes! But how? By giving us a loaf of bread, or an old pair of shoes, or two piastres. Bah! But the Americans! They give pounds and whole suits, and they don’t ask to hear the whole story of your past life. Americans? Why, there are dozens of American missionaries, judges, merchants, engineers, and ei! Gott! the tourists! There’s your rich harvest, mein Freund! Why, a year I’ve been in Cairo learning English and picking the roosters. I’ve been up to see that greybeard four times! I dressed differently every time and practised every story for weeks until I got the accent right. Three times I got ten piastres, but the fourth he asked me questions, and, as I hadn’t practised the answers, I talked wild English and tangled myself up. Then I tried to get out of it by saying I was a Pennsylvania Dutchman. The old man started in on geography, and when I told him Pennsylvania was on the Gulf of Mexico he took his cane and chased me out. I’ve studied maps of the United States since then, though. He couldn’t catch me again. I know every city.”

“Yes,” he went on, as we turned into the now deserted Moosky, “all die Kunde try to be Americans. Aber Gott! The fools! They are too pig-headed ever to learn to talk English with an American accent. But you! Du glücklicher Kerl! You can live in Cairo until you grow a beard!”

I paid my lodging and followed the German up a narrow, winding stairway at the back of the shop. On the third story he pushed open a door much like the drop of a home-made rabbit trap, which gave admittance to a small room where four of six beds were already occupied. It needed only one long-drawn breath to prove that the “bedclothes” had not seen the washtub during several generations of “the boys,” and that a can of insect powder could be used to great advantage. But he who is both penniless and hypercritical should remain at home. I took the bed beside that of the German and was soon asleep.

I awoke next morning to find my guide of the night before sitting on his bed at a dry-goods box before the single window, sipping black coffee from a tin can and eating a boiled egg and a slab of bread with one hand, and slowly penning a letter with the other. Having seen enough of him already to be convinced that he was a man of considerable education, I was surprised to find that he wielded a pen with such apparent difficulty.

“It’s this English script that troubles me,” he remarked, as if in answer to my unexpressed question. “When you have written all your life in German script, it is hard to change.”

“Then you’re writing English?” I cried.

He motioned to the letter before him as he swallowed the last of the coffee:—“Of course! A man can’t eat if he doesn’t work. There’s a New York millionaire just come to town. His name is Leigh Hunt, and I’m writing to ask him for employment. He won’t have any, of course, but he may send me a pound or two. I found it too hard to learn to speak English without a foreign accent, so I write instead.”

He reached inside the box that served as table and tossed a dozen unstamped letters on my bed. All were addressed to Englishmen or Americans, among them people of international reputation.

“Read them according to the dates,” said the youth, “and see if my English hasn’t improved. I copied them all and sent out the copies. All but two sent me money. One wrote me to come and see him to-day. The other I haven’t heard from. You don’t spell ‘poverty’ with a capital, do you?”

As he had spoken but one sentence in English since our meeting, I was surprised to note the fluent use of that language in his letters. None of them contained actual errors; and only a peculiar turning of a phrase, here and there, which a reader off his guard might easily have overlooked, betrayed the nationality of the writer. The stories they told were proof of an inventive imagination. A dozen “hard-luck tales,” no one of which resembled the others, were all signed by different Americanized names, over different addresses. Here a youth from Baltimore, who had come to Egypt to open a store, had been robbed of all he possessed. There a civil engineer from New York had been forced to leave his work on the Berber-Suakim line and hasten down to Cairo to attend a sick wife and four small children. An aged stone mason, who had been injured while working on the barrage at Assuan, prayed for assistance to get back to his home in Cincinnati. A California prospector, just returned from an unsuccessful expedition into the Uganda protectorate, was lying ill and penniless in a miserable lodging-house.

Nor did the resourceful German confine himself to his own sex. The last letter was an appeal to a well-known American lady from a young girl who had come from Boston to act as stenographer to a tourist firm that had not materialized, and who sought assistance before starvation should drive her to ruin.

“How about this Boston story?” I asked.

“Best of the lot,” replied the youth. “Sent me two pounds and a letter full of wise advice—for females.”

“But didn’t she ask to see you?”

“Bah! Most of them are too busy enjoying themselves. They prefer to send a bank note and forget the matter. Once in a while, one of them sends for me and, if I think he is not too clever—most millionaires aren’t, you know—I go to see him, and generally get something on the Pennsylvania Dutch story.”

“Where do you get the names?”

“Mostly from this,” said the youth, reaching into the box once more and pulling out a Paris edition of the New York Herald. “If a millionaire starts for Egypt, or lands here, or catches cold, or bruises his toe, the Herald knows it—and never forgets the address. Then there is a society paper published here in Cairo—”

“Do you write German letters, too?”

“Not many. I used to, when I first came to Africa, but it’s a poor game. I began to study English when I came to Cairo, a year ago. My first letters must have been bad, for I got no answers. But they make me a living now, and an occasional spree.”

“How much time does your letter writing take?”

“Four hours. I used to write at all times. Then I read of an author who wrote, rain or shine, from nine till one, and I find it a good idea. But to-day I’m going to break the rule and show you where you can talk the pounds out of some rich Americans. Why,” he cried, enthusiastically, “there hasn’t been a real American working the crowd since I’ve been here. We’ll go into partnership. I know all the ropes and you can do the writing and interviewing; and, when we get Cairo pumped out, we’ll go up the Nile! I know every white man from here to Cape Town. I’ve covered Africa from one end to the other—with an American partner, too. But he was a real Pennsylvania Dutchman and had a little accent. You’ll do much better. Africa’s all good; though Cairo’s the best, for there’s no vagrancy law here. We’ll make an easy living together or my name isn’t Otto Pia.”

“Ever think of going to America?”

“Never,” he cried, “unless I was drunk. Never again a white man’s country for me! Here, a white wanderer is an isolated case of misfortune, far from his native shore. At home, he is only a common tramp, one among thousands, and the man who would give him pounds here would give him to the police there. That’s why few of die Kunde who come here—if they have brains enough to weave Märchen—ever go back. Do you know the secret of getting the sympathy of the rich? It’s to make them think we’re much worse off here than at home and to keep before them the idea that we cannot find work. For that reason I am a plate-layer in Cairo; for plate-layers are only needed far up the Nile. If I’m up the Nile, I’m a stenographer, or a waiter, or anything else that there is sure to be no work for. No, mein Freund, never your United States for me! And you’ll not go back either, when I’ve showed you how easy it is to pick the roosters here. A tramp, you know, is like a prophet—’er gilt nichts in seinem Vaterlande.’”

“While you’re dressing and thinking up a few good Märchen,” he went on, turning to his writing, “I’ll copy this letter. Then I’ll show you a few of the easiest marks.”

I protested, however, that I had come to Cairo to work rather than to weave “fairy tales.”

“Work?” he shouted, throwing aside his pen and springing to his feet, “A fellow who can write and talk English—and German, too, wants to work in Cairo? Why, mein lieber Kerl, you—you—” but the words stuck in his astonished throat.

I descended to the street and set out to visit such European contractors as I could locate. Long after dark, foot-sore and half-famished, covered with the dust of Cairo, I returned to the rendezvous and sat down at one of the tables. It was quite evident that die Kunde were neither foot-sore nor hungry, and their garments were as immaculate as second-hand garments can be made. The “wise ones” had loafed in the cafés and gardens, had written a letter or told a hard-luck story somewhere, and turned up at night with money enough to make merry through the whole evening. I, having tramped all day, from one address to another, turned up with—an appetite.

Otto Pia watched me, with a half-smile on his countenance, for some time after I had entered. Then he raised his cane and rapped on the table for silence.

“Ei! Gute Kamaraden!” he cried, “I have something to show you! Guk’ mal! Here is a comrade who is an American—do you hear—a real American, not a patched-up one; and this real American—in Cairo—wants to work!”

“Work?” roared the chorus, “Work in Cairo—and a real American—Lieber Gott—Ist’s denn ein Esel?—”

I ate a meager supper and crawled away to bed. On the following day, I tramped even greater distances, and returned to the wine shop with only the price of a lodging left from the missionary’s donation. Pia rose and took a seat beside me.

“Lot of work you found, eh?” he began. “Didn’t any of them offer you money?”

“Most of them,” I answered.

“And you didn’t take it?” cried the German, “Why, you—you—you’re a disgrace to the union.

“I know how you feel though,” he went on, “I was the same once. When I ran away from Germany—to escape the army—I wouldn’t take a cent I hadn’t earned; and I starved a month in Pietermaritzburg, looking for work as you are here, before I got over my silly notions. Ach! I was an ass! I tell you it’s no use. You won’t find work—especially in those rags. If you will work, let me take you where you can get some clothes first.”

It was all too evident that he was right. Weather-beaten garments might pass muster in the wilderness of Palestine, but they were wholly out of place in the Paris of Africa. Twice that day, those who had refused me employment had offered to fit me out in their cast-off clothing. I concluded to profit by the experience of Pia.

The German abandoned the composition of pathetic short stories for an hour next morning to conduct me to the Secretary of the “Cairo Aid Society,” a minister of the Church of England. Having pointed out the rectory, he left me without a sign of recognition, and marched unfalteringly down the street until he vanished behind the next row of houses. I mounted the broad steps and pressed the electric button. A jet-black Arab opened the door.

“I want to see the Reverend ——,” I began.

“Very sorry, but Reverend —— not in,” replied the servant, with a flash of ivory teeth in a very friendly smile.

“When will he be in?”

“Ah! Reverend —— gone to Iskanderia. No can tell. Come back maybe three day, maybe week,” and the black face grew so sorrowful with pity that I hastened to leave, lest tears should begin to flow.

The German was awaiting me about four steps from the spot where he had disappeared at a brisk walk.

“You’re back soon,” he said, “what luck?”

“He is not in.”

“Not in? Höllespein! Certainly he’s in! He never goes out before noon. Do you think I’m a bungler at my profession? I know the hours of every padre in Cairo, exactly, always! Who told you he was not in?”

“His servant.”

“Was! Ein verdammter Schwartze? Herr Gott, aber du bist roh! Two days looking for work, and you don’t know yet that every nigger servant will tell you his master is out? Not in!”—and he burst forth in his peculiarly silent, yet uproarious laughter.

A new light had broken in upon me. This, then, was the reason that of some forty white men whom I had called on for employment, a bare dozen had been at home? I left my companion to conquer his risibility alone, and, hastening back to the rectory, brought the servant to the door with a vicious ring.

“I’ve heard the Reverend —— is in. I want to see him.”

There was no smile on the ebony face now. Even through the mask of black skin one could see anger welling up, the blind rage of the Mussulman against the hated unbeliever.

“I say Reverend —— not in!” snarled the servant, in hoarse sotto voce, “Go away.”

With a string of English oaths that spoke better of his linguistic abilities than the influence of his master, he shut the door, quickly, yet noiselessly.

I pressed a finger against the electric button and kept it there. A quick muffled patter of footsteps sounded inside, a whispered imprecation came through the keyhole. My finger was growing numb. I relieved it with a thumb without breaking the circuit.

“Go away,” growled the servant, fiercely, half opening the door, “go way, damn you, I cut your neck”—and his speech did not end there. I relieved my thumb with another finger. The murderous gleam in the Arab’s eyes blazed forth more fiercely, then by a stern command of the will changed to an appeal.

“My God, stop!” he begged.

“Is your master in Iskanderia?”

A cry of rage trembled on his lips and was forced back.

“No,” he snapped, throwing open the door.

I stepped inside and followed him along the hall. At the entrance to a well-stocked library he turned to me with a hoarse whisper:—“Damn you! Why for you ring bell? I make you full of holes—”

A light step sounded in the passage and a grey-haired English lady stepped towards us.

“Yes, sir,” continued the Arab, without a pause, “master see you right away, sir. Step inside, please, sir.”

“Maghmoód,” said the lady, “who was ringing the door bell so long?”

“Think button get stuck, lady, when gentleman push,” replied the Arab, beaming upon me, “Shall I bring chocolate, lady?”

I sat down in the library and was joined almost at once by a sturdy, well-groomed old gentleman—a Briton by every token.

“Have trouble in getting in?” he demanded abruptly, before I had spoken.

“Why—er—the servant thought at first you were not in,” I admitted.

“That rascal!” cried the minister, “I have dismissed ten servants since I became secretary of the Society, for no other fault. Maghmoód knows that it is my duty to keep open house during the morning; yet for some reason I cannot fathom, an Arab domestic cannot bear the thought of seeing his master give assistance of any kind to Europeans in unfortunate circumstances. It is a servant problem that has often been discussed among English residents; yet even the plumber and the carpenter continue to be shut out from houses where they have been sent for, unless they are well acquainted with native tricks.

“Now as to your case”—he needed no enlightenment as to my errand, evidently—“you need clothes, of course. Ordinarily, I have several suits on hand, sent by Englishmen in the city; but there has been such a run of German tramps that I have nothing left. I shall have something before long, surely. Meanwhile, I will give you a four-day ticket to the Asile Rudolph, our Society building. What is your trade?”

“I have worked as carpenter, mason, blacksmith, stevedore—”

“Good! Good!” said the rector. “You should find work easily. If you don’t, come back when your ticket runs out. I shall call Maghmoód up on the carpet. Good-day, my man.”

I hastened to join the German.

“That’s good as a beginning,” he said, as I displayed the ticket, “It shows you are on the trail, and you can work him for tickets for two or three weeks. But I must get back to my desk. Follow this avenue to the parade grounds; where you saw the Khedive’s guard drilling, you know. The Asile is close by.”

In a side street in which sprawled and squalled native infants uncountable, I tugged at a bell rope protruding from a stern brick wall, and was admitted by a bare-legged Arab to the courtyard of the Asile Rudolph. The superintendent, seated before the “office,” called for my ticket. He was a sprightly Englishman, in the autumn of life, long a captain in the Black Sea service, and still known to all as “Cap Stevenson.” Around two sides of the court were the kitchen and sleeping-rooms of the male inmates. Opposite the entrance towered the Women’s Asile, a blank wall except for one window opening, through which the English matron thrust her head at frequent intervals to berate the captain, in a caustic falsetto, for the hilarity of his charges.

Among my new companions, some two score of ragged, care-free fellows who had already gathered around the tables in the open air dining-room, the German vagabond predominated. The French, Italian, and Greek tongues were frequently heard, there were two or three castaways from the British Isles; but as long as I remained at the Asile I was the sole representative of the western hemisphere.

An Arab servant bawled out from the depths of the kitchen, and, as we filed by the door, handed each of us a bowl of steaming soup and an ample slab of bread. There was no French parsimoniousness about the Asile Rudolph. Each bowl held a liberal quart—of something more than discolored dishwater, too—and down at the bottom were three cubes of meat. Never did a bowl appear during all the days that I wondered at the audacity of the society’s butcher without exactly three such cubes, of exactly the same size. To my companions they were the daintiest of morsels. The best-dressed vagabond never dreamed of tasting his soup until he had fished out this basic flesh and laid it on the table before him to gloat over until he had finished his liquid refreshment. Once gorged with soup, he sliced the cubes carefully, dipped the strips in rock salt, and slowly munched them, one by one, in his eyes the far-away look of keen enjoyment. As for myself, when I attempted to cut up my first cube, it bounded away over my head and before I could turn around to follow its flight had disappeared into the pocket of some quicker-witted guest. I dismembered the second morsel with the assistance of a fellow-boarder, and inflicted upon my teeth a piece of convenient size. An hour later, I deposited the still undamaged delicacy outside a factory gate at the further end of the city. When I turned out to renew my search it was gone.

Thoughtful guests of the Society made provision during the noon-hour of plenty for the twenty-four hours to come; for morning and evening brought only coffee or tea, and bread. There was, however, something more than bed and board in store for the lucky possessor of one of the Reverend ——’s tickets—a shower bath! It was closed during the day, but I was by no means the last to finish the evening meal, and, once inside the wooden closet, it was only the protest that the stream could be used to even better advantage among my companions that saved me from a watery grave.

I began my fourth day’s search by applying at the office of the chief owners of modern Egypt—Thomas Cook and Son. There is hardly a walk in life, from the architect to the donkey-boy, that is not represented among the employees of that great tourist agency. Somewhere in those cosmopolitan ranks, I might find my place. I proffered my services to the company as a sailor on their Nile steamers, as an unskilled workman in any of their enterprises, as a man with a trade in the Bulak factory where their floating palaces are constructed. Nothing came of it. In desperation, I struck out in a struggle directly against the economic law of labor, and, instead of dropping lower with each refusal, sought to climb higher.

It was true, admitted the manager, that the company was in need of clerks. It was still more in need of interpreters, and, to all appearance, I was qualified for either position. “But—but—I’m sorry, old chap,” and he looked sternly at my heelless slippers and ragged corduroys, “but really, you won’t do, don’t you know. I can give you a note to a well-known contractor—”

I accepted it with pleasure; for the name of Cook and Son, embossed at the top of a letter of introduction, has great weight in Egypt. The contractor to whom the note was addressed gave me—another. The addressee of the second gave me a third. Two, three, four days, I spent in delivering notes to the European residents of Cairo and waging battle against her Islamite servant body. Night after night I returned to the Asile with one stereotyped answer in my head:—

“I really haven’t anything I can put you at now. I’ll give you a letter to ——. Are you on the rocks? Well, here, perhaps this dollar will help you out. You don’t want it? Well, I’ll keep you in mind.”

The employers were divided into two classes: those who offered money as the easiest means of getting rid of an unwelcome visitor, and those who had been “on the rocks” themselves and protested against my refusal to accept alms in the words of the water-works superintendent:—“Take it, man, there is no harder work than looking for work; why not be paid for it?” The strangest fact of all, one that impresses itself on the out-of-work the world over, was the conviction of each that I should easily find employment. “Why, to be sure,” exclaimed a superintendent of shops in Bulak, “we haven’t anything to offer just now; but a man with your list of trades will certainly find work in Cairo in a few hours, without the slightest trouble.” It would have been hard to convince him that I had heard that same statement in a half-dozen languages a score of times a day for a week past. Gradually the assertion of “the comrades,” that he who would work in the Egyptian capital was an ass, took on new force.

Rich or penniless, however, he who does not enjoy the winter season in Cairo must be either an invalid, a prisoner, or an incurable pessimist. Here one does not need to add to every projected plan, “weather permitting.” The sojourner in the land of Egypt knows, as he goes to his rest at night, that, whatever misfortune to-morrow may bring, it will be lightened by joyous sunshine. Nor need the sans-sous lack entertainment in this city of the Nile. One had but to stroll to the vicinity of the Esbekieh Gardens to hear a band concert, to see some quaint native performance, or to find some excitement afoot. At all hours of the day those fortunate beings whose names graced the pages of Pia’s society papers displayed their charms to the watching throng. At frequent intervals the Khedive and his bodyguard thundered by. Now and then the bellow of Cairo’s champion saïs heralded the approach of the Khedive’s master, Lord Cromer. Nay, entertainment there was never lacking—merely food.

When my ticket ran out on the morning of the fourth day, I did not apply at once for another. The evening before, the Greek proprietor of a famous cigarette factory had promised me a position, had even explained to me my probable duties as general porter in the establishment. But when I had inveigled my way into the inner sanctum for the second time, it was only to learn that a compatriot of the proprietor had applied earlier in the morning, and was already at work. Not to be outdone by his fellow-faranchees, the Greek offered me—a letter of introduction.

The hour of public audiences at the rectory was passed. The day, moreover, was Saturday, a half-holiday among contractors. In the hope of earning a night’s lodging by some errand, I joined the howling mob of guides, interpreters, street-hawkers, and fakirs, before Shepherd’s Hotel. I was the sole Frank in the gathering. Die Kameraden, whatever their nationality, would have been transfixed with horror had they seen one of their own patrician class competing with “niggers” for employment. As a last resort, had “the business” been utterly outrooted in Cairo, the members of “the union” might have consented to busy themselves with some genteel occupation; but had gaunt starvation squatted on his haunches in their path, they would never have stooped to the work of natives.

My presence was soon noised through all the screaming multitude, and I was cleverly “pocketed” by a dozen snake swallowers and sword jugglers, and gradually forced towards the outskirts of the crowd. When I resorted to force and beat my way to the front rank, I was little better off than before. For two hours I watched the natives about me selling, begging, running errands, or marching away to guide a tourist party through the city; without once seeing a beckoning finger in answer to my own offers of service. At frequent intervals, a lady appeared on the hotel piazza, ran her eyes slowly over the front ranks, stared at me a moment, and, summoning some one-eyed rascal beside me, sent him across the city with a perfumed note. The ladies, certainly, were not to be blamed. It was so much more romantic; there was so much more local color in one’s doings, don’t you know, if one’s errands were run by a Cairene in flowing robes, rather than by a tramp such as one could see at home any day in St. Charles or Madison Square! What if one paid an exorbitant price for such services? It was to a picturesque figure, don’t you know, whose English was excruciatingly funny.

It is half disgusting, half pathetic, this ebb and flow of the population of Egypt at the crook of a tourist finger. From the door, on which every eye was fixed, emerged the blatant figure of a pompous pork-packer, or the half-baked offspring of a self-made ancestry. With a wild howl the mob rose en masse and surged forward, threatening to break my ribs against the foot of the piazza. If the pork packer scowled, the throng fell back like a receding tide. If the half-baked offspring raised an eyebrow, the multitude swept on, tossing me far up the steps into the arms of “buttons,” on guard against the besiegers below.

He was a coarse-grained cockney, this “buttons,” and, in carrying out his orders to repel boarders, he was neither a respecter of persons nor of his mother tongue. A score of times I was pushed down the steps I had not chosen to ascend, with a violence and profanity out of all keeping with racial brotherhood.