Jest as I was a thinkin’ this, who should I meet face to face but Cousin Bean, and says she: “Have you seen the mummy from Egypt, three thousand years old?”
“Mummy who?” says I.
Says she,—“It is a Egyptian woman, a princess; she is dead,” says she.
Says I,—“I thought so, from her age.”
“She is embalmed,” says Cousin Bean.
“What kind of balm?” says I, coolly.
She said she nor nobody else knew exactly what kind of balm it was; she said it had got lost thousands of years ago; covered up with the dust of centuries.
I asked her if she knew whether she was any relation of Sphynx; comin’ from the same neighborhood, I didn’t know but she might be.
She said she believed she was.
“Well,” says I, “I’ll go and see her then, for old Sphynx is a woman I have always respected;” says I in a noble tone, “there is a woman who has minded her own business, and kep’ her own secrets for thousands of years. Some say that a woman can’t keep anything to herself for any length of time, and if she has got a secret, has got to git some other woman to help her keep it. But there she has stood and seen the old things become new, and the new, old; the sun of knowledge go down, and the night of barbarism sweep its black shadders over her, and the sun rise up on her again, each one takin’ thousands of years, and she a mindin’ her own business, and keepin’ her affairs to herself through it all; foolin’ the hull world, and not smilin’ at it; nations runnin’ crazy with new idees, and risin’ up and crashin’ down on each other every few hundred years, and she lookin’ on with the calmness and patience of eternity wrote down on her forward. It does me good to see one of my own sect stand so firm.”