At Shepheard’s there is always the man who has “been there before,” and like the same man at the play, he sits beside you and interprets the picture. You finally promise that you will not go to the _monskie_ without him, and that you will not see the Sphinx by moonlight unless he is there; for if you do, not having been there before, you will be sure to go too early or too late. He says the moon should be at just such an angle and no other. The peddlers in the monskie know him, and while they entertain him with little cups of sweet tea they complain that they have had no luck since they last saw him, and they ask eagerly after that gentleman he brought to them the year before--the gentleman who had such exquisite taste and backed it up so generously with his money. And you drink their tea, and feel, as you leave the shops, after having only looked at their things, that they will never ask affectionately after you. The man who has been there before generally walks in front of you, as if he were not as anxious to have you see the place as he is to have you see that he knows his way about; and, after all, it is no small thing to be proud of. If I ever go to the mouskie again, I shall pity the greenhorn who happens to be with me. The bazaars are dirty, and so many pasty-faced Turks squatting about in the filth grow tiresome. At first they are described in letters home as fascinating and picturesque, and whole days are spent with them, buying hundreds of things that are destined to be left in hotel bureau drawers and gradually lost. The souvenirs we buy in the mouskie seem to melt away. The precious stones we bought there turn to glass, the slippers become pasteboard, the gilt things tarnish, and the brass-work bends itself into old junk, and the mouskie is only a confused dream; so no wonder the old traveler is proud that he can actually find his [Illustration: “The man who has ‘been there before.’”] [Illustration: In a Coffee-house, Cairo.] way about in it. He had probably begun to think that there never had been such a place. But Egypt is full of real things, and probably the most genuine thing of them all is the English occupation. Egypt herself is the best proof of how necessary to her well-being this is. It is hard to tell just how unhappy the fellaheen were before the English came. The Egyptian is not the sort of man that complains. After centuries of oppression, he now accepts whatever form of government is offered in a browbeaten way, and shuffles along after his donkey, and pays his tax for bringing a few bundles of clover across the bridge into Cairo without a murmur; and, judging by his looks, I doubt if he would make much disturbance if he found, some morning, that the tax on his clover had been doubled. He evidently feels like a very small depositor in a broken bank. England is the largest creditor, and is straightening things out for them both, and he is satisfied.