Nile or in the harbor at its mouth. They cast their lines from opposite sides of the boat. She seemed to have all the luck, while he like the disciples once caught nothing. She thought she would have a little joke on him, and so quietly directed one of the attendants to slip over the edge of the barge and to dive and to put on his hook a salt fish. The slave entered into the fun of the thing, and not only did as he was bidden, but he gave the line a sharp twitch, and then held it firm. The Roman was tremendously excited over his "colossal bite," and he pulled with all his might. The bewitching Egyptian must have laughed covertly, as she cautioned him to look out or he would be dragged into the water. Just at this point, the servant loosened his hold, and the lordly Roman toppled over in a very undignified way, but he recovered himself and proudly drew in his gamy catch, a salted herring. Under the circumstances, he probably had nothing to say about what he had called "the splendors of thy smile," which must have been broad enough not only to suffuse her own ample face, but also to spread to the countenances of the menial onlookers. He, however, was sufficiently gallant to appreciate her jocularity and to share in her merriment. He solemnly admitted that the fish was not as big as he had anticipated from the pull, but he added, doubtless with a twinkle in his eye, that while it was not the largest, it had every appearance of being the oldest of any that had been caught. Cleopatra's light-heartedness appears again in the romping to which she sometimes gave herself. She entered into the frolic with great zest. She and Antony in disguise were accustomed to steal through the streets of her capital at night, knocking at people's doors, and then racing away, and fairly choking with suppressed laughter. It was like mischievous young folks now ringing doorbells, and then rushing away to escape detection. The Egyptian queen would have relished the story of Phillips Brooks in Boston watching a small lad in an effort to reach the electric button at the entrance to a mansion of our New England metropolis, when the good Bishop said he would ring for the little chap, who supposedly was seeking admission. But no sooner did the wild alarm sound within, than the youngster, suiting his own action to the words, yelled, "Now run, run like the devil, or they'll catch you." We take a parting view of the enchantress in a Shakesperean, characteristic and pleasing scene of her in her passage up the silver Cydnus" to Tarsus, when in the memorable voyage she personated Venus. 66 "The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, Burnt on the water; the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails and so perfumed that The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke. . . ... On each side Stood pretty dimpled boys like smiling Cupids At Alexandria we are near the place where in 1799 was unearthed the celebrated Rosetta Stone, now one of the treasures of the British Museum. It was uncovered near the mouth of the Rosetta branch of the Nile, while excavations were going on for a building. It is a slab of marble something over three feet high, and it contains a trilingual inscription by one of the Ptolemies, and the date is 195 B. C. By comparing the Greek on this with the Hieroglyphics containing the same statement, little by little there was picked out and mastered a new language, which consisted largely of pictured birds and animals, with such intervening marks as children might make. There was thus providentially found a key to the reading of the monuments, which accordingly have yielded up their secrets. Reaching Cairo on our journey, we are at a center whence we can radiate in various directions for sight-seeing. Omitting the mosques and bazaars, and snake-charmers and curious street scenes innumerable, we give ourselves exclusively to antiquities. If we drive out five miles to Heliopolis, we will be on the site of the city of the sun, where Joseph rose to greatness, and where he married the daughter of the priest of the temple that was there. This was the original location of the so-called Cleopatra's Needles, the obelisks erected by Thotmes the Third. One of them is now on the Thames embankment, London, another in Central Park, New York City, while a third graces the Hippodrome in Constantinople, and a fourth as completed by a grandson, the highest of them all, rises 105 feet before St. John Lateran in Rome. The Hebrew husband of the daughter of the priest of On may not have seen these, but he and his Egyptian bride did look upon that father of obelisks, which still stands at Heliopolis, and which was raised on its pedestal before Abraham was born, dating as it is said to do from Userten I of the twelfth dynasty, perhaps 2400 B. C. Connected with this same city of the sun is the fable of the Phoenix, which was said to rise every 500 years from its own ashes. According to the olden fairy tale, the magnificent creature built its nest of precious woods, and while spectators watched, it started about itself mysterious flames, which consumed it utterly. It fed on flowers and fragrant gums, and its life went out amid sweet-smelling and agreeable odors. Scarcely had it, with its gorgeous plumage, dissolved in death, before there sprang up a new bird of crimson and gold, which sailed majestically away. Tacitus, the Latin writer, says that it was "accompanied by a vast retinue of other birds gazing with admiration on the beauteous miracle." It was thus that the Egyptians tried to teach the lesson of immortality. Running out fifteen miles from Cairo, we are at Memphis, where there are the Sakkarat pyramids, and where there is the mausoleum containing huge sarcophagi that once held the sacred bulls of coal-black color after they had been embalmed. These suggest how Aaron happened to make the golden calf, and how an Israelitish king came to set up two calves to be worshipped, one in the northern part of the kingdom, and the other toward the south. Take a general view of the site of the city which Menes may have founded, and which professor Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard has said must have been as large as Constantinople at present,see there to-day the lonely stretch of dreariness and utter forsakeness, and you will appreciate what Ezekiel prophesied, "I will cause the images to cease from Memphis," and what Jeremiah predicted, "Memphis shall become a desolation, and shall be burnt up, without inhabitant." That is precisely the case there. Connected with this olden city is a charming romance. While a fair maiden, like the princess who went down to the river to wash and found Moses in the ark of bulrushes, while like her a girl was bathing in the Nile at Thebes, an eagle (naughty creature) flew off with one of her sandals, and happened to drop it at the feet of the Egyptian king at Memphis. Struck with its beauty, he despatched messengers in every direction to find the owner of the dainty slipper. No sooner was she discovered than she was made the queen, his Cinderella. That is a lovely bit of Egyptian literature, throwing a ray of brightness on the dark scene where a a great city has wholly passed away exactly as Scripture foretold. Taking another excursion from Cairo, we visit the Pyramids which are in the near vicinity, "which," said Longfellow, "Wedge-like cleave the desert airs," and which can be reached by an electric line. We recall that Napoleon stimulated his soldiers to gain the battle of the pyramids by saying impressively, "From those summits forty centuries contemplate your actions." The Great Pyramid, the greatest of the Ghizeh or any other group, a fourth and the oldest of the "seven wonders," was the work of Cheops or Khufu nearly six thousand years ago. We can readily credit the statement of Herodotus, that he employed 100,000 men twenty years upon the huge work. It covers thirteen acres, and rises to the height of 451 feet. To walk round it. you would have to go a trifle over half a mile. A Frenchman has computed that its stones, and those of its two companions, would be sufficient to make a wall six feet high and one foot wide clear around France. Such comparisons give us some conception of these prodigious architectural piles, upon which the boy Jesus may have looked with childish wonder, when the Scripture was fulfilled, "Out of Egypt have I called my son." Not far away from these is the Sphinx, reached by us on the backs of camels. Tourists usually are in a gale of laughter as mounted on these awkward beasts they go crunching along over the shifting sands, and they feel that they constitute a typical "Caravan in Egypt," and they have |