ABDULLAH AND HIS FRIENDS.
AN EGYPTIAN BOOT-BLACK.
BY L. M. F.
I am only a poor Egyptian boot-black, but, for all that, I do not consider myself the inferior of any living being, and feel very proud to own that I am a descendant from one of the most ancient nations existing on the face of the earth. I was born in Cairo, Egypt; so were all my ancestors, and no other land bears the imprints of the soles of their feet, for they lived and died in this sunny land.
My name is Abdullah (i. e., servant of God). I am an orphan; my parents died before I was five, leaving me a waif trusting to the mercy of the world at large. Having no home, and no kith or kin to claim me, I was thrown into the streets to hunt up my own living. I used to wander up and down begging for a para, a piece of bread, or anything with which I could satisfy the pangs of hunger. Thus I passed about four years of my life living on beggary, till one day I noticed a boy blacking an Englishman's boots, and he paid the boy one piastre for doing it. I at once resolved to earn my living that way, and begged the boy to instruct me. He first refused, but on my telling him I was an orphan, he at once taught me how to handle the brushes, and gave me a couple of old ones which he had in his box. I gratefully accepted them. Hastening to one of the stores, I begged for an empty little box, and fastening it to a piece of rope I had found on a dust heap, I slung it across my shoulder proudly, in imitation of all boot-blacks. How could I get some blacking? was my next thought. I entered a grocery store, and said to the owner, "Ya sidi" (i. e., my lord), "I will black your boots for a couple of figs."
"You don't look like a boot-black," he responded.