has laid
The Victorious low. The swarthy children of the desert might, and
possibly would, be ready and willing to go forth and fight men with
men's weapons for the freedom to live and die unmolested in their own
native land; but against the blandly-smiling, white-helmeted,
sun-spectacled, perspiring horde of Cook's "cheap trippers," what can
they do save remain inert and well-nigh speechless? For nothing like
the cheap tripper was ever seen in the world till our present enlightened
and glorious day of progress; he is a new-grafted type of nomad, like
and yet unlike a man. The Darwin theory asserts itself proudly and
prominently in bristles of truth all over him--in his restlessness, his
ape-like agility and curiosity, his shameless inquisitiveness, his careful
cleansing of himself from foreign fleas, his general attention to
minutiae, and his always voracious appetite; and where the ape ends
and the man begins is somewhat difficult to discover. The "image of
God" wherewith he, together with his fellows, was originally supposed
to be impressed in the first fresh days of Creation, seems fairly blotted
out, for there is no touch of the Divine in his mortal composition. Nor
does the second created phase-the copy of the Divineo--namely, the
Heroic,- -dignify his form or ennoble his countenance. There is nothing
of the heroic in the wandering biped who swings through the streets of
Cairo in white flannels, laughing at the staid composure of the Arabs,
flicking thumb and finger at the patient noses of the small hireable
donkeys and other beasts of burden, thrusting a warm red face of
inquiry into the shadowy recesses of odoriferous bazaars, and
sauntering at evening in the Esbekiyeh Gardens, cigar in mouth and
hands in pockets, looking on the scene and behaving in it as if the
whole place were but a reflex of Earl's Court Exhibition. History affects
the cheap tripper not at all; he regards the Pyramids as "good building"
merely, and the inscrutable Sphinx itself as a fine target for empty
soda-water bottles, while perhaps his chiefest regret is that the granite
whereof the ancient monster is hewn is too hard for him to inscribe his
distinguished name thereon. It is true that there is a punishment
inflicted on any person or persons attempting such wanton work--a fine
or the bastinado; yet neither fine nor bastinado would affect the
"tripper" if he could only succeed in carving "'Arry" on the Sphinx's
jaw. But he cannot, and herein is his own misery. Otherwise he
comports himself in Egypt as he does at Margate, with no more thought,
reflection, or reverence than dignify the composition of his far-off
Simian ancestor.
Taking him all in all, he is, however, no worse, and in some respects
better, than the "swagger" folk who "do" Egypt, or rather, consent in a
languid way to be "done" by Egypt. These are the people who annually
leave England on the plea of being unable to stand the cheery, frosty,
and in every respect healthy winter of their native country--that winter,
which with its wild winds, its sparkling frost and snow, its holly trees
bright with scarlet berries, its merry hunters galloping over field and
moor during daylight hours, and its great log fires roaring up the
chimneys at evening, was sufficiently good for their forefathers to
thrive upon and live through contentedly up to a hale and hearty old
age in the times when the fever of travelling from place to place was an
unknown disease, and home was indeed "sweet home." Infected by
strange maladies of the blood and nerves, to which even scientific
physicians find it hard to give suitable names, they shudder at the first
whiff of cold, and filling huge trunks with a thousand foolish things
which have, through luxurious habit, become necessities to their pallid
existences, they hastily depart to the Land of the Sun, carrying with
them their nameless languors, discontents and incurable illnesses, for
which Heaven itself, much less Egypt, could provide no remedy. It is
not at all to be wondered at that these physically and morally sick tribes
of human kind have ceased to give any serious attention as to what may
possibly become of them after death, or whether there IS any "after,"
for they are in the mentally comatose condition which precedes entire
wreckage of brain-force; existence itself has become a "bore;" one
place is like another, and they repeat the same monotonous round of
living in every spot where they congregate, whether it be east, west,
north, or south. On the Riviera they find little to do except meet at
Rumpelmayer's at Cannes, the London House at Nice, or the Casino at
Monte-Carlo; and in Cairo they inaugurate a miniature London
"season" over again, worked in the same groove of dinners, dances,
drives, picnics,
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