Harper's Young People, November 14, 1882 / An Illustrated Weekly

I said, When will the summer come? Mamma, is it not late? She smiled, and answered. By-and-by; Be patient, child, and wait. I asked papa if he would buy A new wax doll for me. He pinched my cheek, and said, Not now; Be patient, and I'll see. Nurse, tell me when my dear rose-bush A blossom red will bear. Oh, by-and-by, my dear. Don't fret. Come, let me brush your hair. When shall I grow so tall, papa, That I can reach your head? Quite soon enough, my little one; Wait patiently, he said. Dear me! I thought; they all say 'Wait.' I'll put my dolls away. And go and sit upon the stairs As long as I can stay. Now I have waited patiently For hours and hours and hours, And yet the dear doll has not come, The summer, nor the flowers. I have not grown a single bit, And now I know it's late. I'm going up to tell mamma It does no good to wait.
So it seems a fellow called Arabi Bey, or some such name, is making a row in Cairo; but of course it won't come to anything—these things never do.
So spoke, after exchanging a few words with a pilot who had just come down the Suez Canal from Port Said, the Captain of our homeward-bound steamer from India, little dreaming how world-famous the row of which he spoke so lightly was to become not many weeks later.
If these Arab fellows should ever want to destroy the canal, says a young English Lieutenant of Engineers going home from India on leave, they wouldn't have much trouble with it. You see there's a regular hollow on each side here and there, and they need only dig through or blow up the embankment to run the channel bone-dry in no time.
His words are confirmed a few minutes later when a group of native goat-herds, as black and shaggy and wild-looking as the goats which they tend, wade out to within a few yards of the steamer, clamorously offering to dive for piastres (five-cent copper pieces). In fact, the Suez Canal, throughout its whole length of eighty-six miles, is as shallow as any ditch except in the very centre of the channel, and even there it has a depth of only twenty six and a quarter feet, with a mean breadth of seventy, widening to one hundred in the sidings.