The better half of one of the honeymoon combinations that came with us from Naples told a plaintive story. She had been travelling for three weeks in weather that had been a _crescendo_ of the disagreeable. All the way across the Atlantic she had been desperately ill in her cabin. In London they found fogs. In Paris it rained. And now they were fighting their way through a storm in the Mediterranean. Notwithstanding all this, she was trying to be cheerful, for she believed that she would like Egypt. The blessedness of travel is that when the sun comes from behind the cloud and a new city begins to arise from the sea, we forget all the gloomy days on board ship, all the crampy rides in the stuffy railway compartments, all the overcharges and vexations and harassments and get ready to tear ashore and explore a new wonderland. Who can forget the first hour of the first railway ride through rural England? The storybook pictures that you have seen all your life come true at last. Or the first hour in London? That tall thing looming right in front of you is really the Nelson monument and not a papier mache deception put up for the entertainment of tourists. In the first hour of 'rickshaw riding in Japan I saw so much that was funny and fantastic and nerve kinking that at the end of the ride I wanted to pay the coolie for a year instead of an hour. And how about the first hour up the Grand Canal in Venice? Or the first hour in the tangled bedlam of Canton? Or the first hour in front of Shepheard's Hotel, here in Cairo, when it really seems that a wonderful pageant has been ordered for your special joy? With bulging eyes and reeling senses you view the changing kaleidoscope and ask, in the language of Mr. Peasley, "Is this on the level?" Yes, travel is hard work, and your true traveller is a mighty grumbler, but he goes on buoyed always by the hope of another "first hour." CHAPTER XII ROUND ABOUT CAIRO, WITH AND WITHOUT THE ASSISTANCE OF THE DRAGOMAN OR SIMON LEGREE OF THE ORIENT Mr. Peasley is a secretive student of the guide book. He reads up beforehand and on the quiet. Then when we come face to face with some "sight" and are wondering about this or that, Mr. Peasley opens the floodgate of his newly-acquired knowledge and deluges the whole party. He is seldom correct, and never accurate, but he knows that he is dealing with an ignorance more profound than his own, and that gives him confidence.