PILLARS OF THOTHMES III., KARNAK, EGYPT, WITH TWO YOUNG MEN ON THE LOOKOUT FOR BUSINESS. THEY ARE BOTH WORTHY OF EVERY ENCOURAGEMENT
These reminiscences take me back again to Alexandria, as it was there that an original seaboard bank was founded. Its first president was Katchaskatchkan, a nephew of King Ram's. The old man saw to it that all the "squeeze" from the corn crop money was deposited here and that it held the margins on Joseph's grain corner. "Katch" broke his neck by falling into the wheat pit, but the incident was soon forgotten in the advancing prosperity of the bank. The place is in ruins, but we saw the "paying teller's gun," which was a decorated club with spikes on it; it lay unnoticed in a nook in the big amalgamated copper vault, covered with papyrus books and records of the bank. Some of the old past due notes on the shelves were still drawing interest and you could hear it tick like the clanking cogs when a ferry boat makes her landing. The writer fairly shudders at what the interest on those notes would now amount to, computed at five per cent. (the prevailing rate paid for call loans in that historic corner), remembering that the interest on a penny compounded at this rate since the dawn of the Christian era would now represent fourteen millions of globes of eighteen-karat gold, each globe the size of our earth! We could not help philosophizing on the change which had taken place in banking principles and methods since those old days; and the whole inspection was very interesting.
OBELISK OF THOTHMES I AND QUEEN HAPSHEPSET XVIII DYNASTY. TWO FINE OBELISKS IN THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK—A LITTLE TOPSY-TURVY LOOKING AND VERY MUCH IN NEED OF REPAIRS
I am reluctant to leave Egypt without saying a word about the "teep," as this land is the very home, the embodiment—the Gibraltar, so to speak, of the wide-open palm for services rendered—or even when they are not rendered. Egypt is not the only place, however, of which this can be said; there are others. But no matter where the dear American tourist lands he "gets it" both coming and going, and the "neck" is usually the place where it first attracts his attention. It is not a new thing, by any means, for the Greeks suffered more from it than we ever have. They called it "gifts," and if a man didn't give, why, he got nothing, just as he gets nothing to-day in "Del's" if he tries to escape with a glad smile instead of the regulation tariff. Usually, as we all know, the rough time is at the reckoning and the departure, if you haven't done the handsome. The waiter, if he knows his business, makes you feel your cheapness if you attempt to "do" him with an affable "Good-night," instead of the real thing. The change is so arranged for you that you may have a wide choice of coins, but if that scheme misses fire, there are still left the overcoat and the hat. The man who can pass through these ordeals with his nerve unfrayed and look through the waiter as if he were a pane of glass, would never have turned a hair if placed in front at the charge of Balaclava. I remember writing a menu card for a dinner once, and when I came to the sweetbread course it was shown that if you hadn't a coin you must still do something. Lucullus was waiting on the bank of the river Styx for his turn on Charon's ferryboat, and of course, being a shade, he had no money in his clothes; but this is what was said:
When Lucullus got on Charon's skiff
He didn't have a cent;
So he handed out a sweetbread
And on the boat he went.
This was as straight a tip as was ever given to a waiter or at a horse-race. There was nothing between Lucullus and the "bread line" except his last sweetbread; yet as a gentleman he gave it up to the ferryman rather than lose his poise when leaving the earth.