and the prices of rooms had doubled. Since we left, several steamers from the west had brought an army of tourists, who were turning Africa into New York, London, and Paris. And at the Casino, in the Ghezireh Gardens, was as good an imitation of Monte Carlo as the law allows, but such a poor one that even the Frenchmen who worked it seemed ashamed of themselves, and the New-Yorker who owned it was very seldom seen there.
“As good an imitation of Monte Carlo as the law allows.”
At Shepheard’s there is always the man who has “been there before,” and like the same man at the play, he sits beside you and interprets the picture. You finally promise that you will not go to the monskie without him, and that you will not see the Sphinx by moonlight unless he is there; for if you do, not having been there before, you will be sure to go too early or too late. He says the moon should be at just such an angle and no other. The peddlers in the monskie know him, and while they entertain him with little cups of sweet tea they complain that they have had no luck since they last saw him, and they ask eagerly after that gentleman he brought to them the year before—the gentleman who had such exquisite taste and backed it up so generously with his money. And you drink their tea, and feel, as you leave the shops, after having only looked at their things, that they will never ask affectionately after you. The man who has been there before generally walks in front of you, as if he were not as anxious to have you see the place as he is to have you see that he knows his way about; and, after all, it is no small thing to be proud of. If I ever go to the mouskie again, I shall pity the greenhorn who happens to be with me.
The bazaars are dirty, and so many pasty-faced Turks squatting about in the filth grow tiresome. At first they are described in letters home as fascinating and picturesque, and whole days are spent with them, buying hundreds of things that are destined to be left in hotel bureau drawers and gradually lost. The souvenirs we buy in the mouskie seem to melt away. The precious stones we bought there turn to glass, the slippers become pasteboard, the gilt things tarnish, and the brass-work bends itself into old junk, and the mouskie is only a confused dream; so no wonder the old traveler is proud that he can actually find his
“The man who has ‘been there before.’”
In a Coffee-house, Cairo.