As I have said, the English press have misrepresented the young Khedive in many ways. He is, in the first place, much older both in appearance and manner and thought than his age would suggest, and if he is sulky to Englishmen it is not to be wondered at. They could hardly expect his Highness to regard them as seriously as his friends as they regard themselves. The Khedive gave me a private audience at the Abdine Palace while I was in Cairo, and from what he said then and from what others who are close to him told me of him, I obtained a very different idea of his personality than I had received from the English. [Illustration: A GUN OF THE MULE BATTERY IN ACTION] He struck me as being distinctly obstinate--a characteristic which is so marked in our President that it can only be considered one of the qualifications for success, and is probably the quality in the Khedive which the English describe as sulkiness. What I liked in him most was his pride in his army and in the Egyptian people as Egyptians. It is always well that a ruler should be so enthusiastic over what is his own that he shows it even to the casual stranger, for if he exhibits it to him, how much more will he show it to his people! The Khedive has gentle tastes, and is said to find his amusement in his garden and among flowers and on the farm lands of his estates; he speaks several languages very well, and dresses and looks--except for the fez and his attendants--like any other young man of twenty-three or twenty-four in Paris or New York. His ministers, who know him best, describe him as having a high spirit, and one that, as he grows older and will be guided by greater experience, will lead him to firmer authority for his own good and for the good of his people. One remark of the Khedive's which is of interest to Americans was to the effect that the officers in his army who had been trained by Stone Bey, and those other American officers who entered the Egyptian army after the end of our Civil War, were, in his opinion, the best-trained men in their particular department in his army. This is the topographical work, and the making of maps and drawings; but those Americans who are in charge of Egyptian troops on the frontier are also well esteemed. It is the English, however, who have made the fighting part of the army what it is. Before they came the troops were unpaid, and badly treated by their officers, but now the infantry and the camel corps and artillery have no trouble in getting recruits.