I’m still not certain how I ought to style you, but I thought I’d compromise as per above. Anyway, it’s a sure thing that I haven’t bothered you much with country-cousin letters. I figure, however, that you’ve put some money in Egypt, so to speak, and what happens to this sandy-eyed foundling of the Nile you would like to know. So I’ve studied the only “complete letter-writer” I could find between the tropic of Capricorn and Khartoum, and this is the contemptible result, as the dagos in Mexico say. This is a hot place by reason of the sun that shines above us, and likewise it is hot because of the niggers that swarm around us. I figure, if we get out of this portion of the African continent inside our skins, that we will have put up a pretty good bluff, and pulled off a ticklish proposition. It’s a sort of early Christian business. You see, David the Saadat is great on moral suasion--he’s a master of it; and he’s never failed yet--not altogether; though there have been minutes by a stop-watch when I’ve thought it wouldn’t stand the strain. Like the Mississippi steamboat which was so weak that when the whistle blew the engines stopped! When those frozen minutes have come to us, I’ve tried to remember the correct religious etiquette, but I’ve not had much practise since I stayed with Aunt Melissa, and lived on skim-milk and early piety. When things were looking as bad as they did for Dives, “Now I lay me down to sleep,” and “For what we are about to receive,” was all that I could think of. But the Saadat, he’s a wonder from Wondertown. With a little stick, or maybe his flute under his arm, he’ll smile and string these heathen along, when you’d think they weren’t waiting for anybody. A spear took off his fez yesterday. He never blinked--he’s a jim-dandy at keeping cool; and when a hundred mounted heathens made a rush down on him the other day, spears sticking out like quills on a porcupine--2.5 on the shell-road the chargers were going--did he stir? Say, he watched ‘em as if they were playing for his benefit. And sure enough, he was right. They parted either side of him when they were ten feet away, and there he was quite safe, a blessing in the storm, a little rock island in the rapids--but I couldn’t remember a proper hymn of praise to say.