orientalcairocit00sladuoft

204 Oriental Cairo
place guide taking a common-place American round a church
like Abu Sarga. As guides always expect to get paid more
when they produce dirty bits of candle from their pockets and
light them, and hold them in front of some obscure detail,
they have seized upon that glorious screen of Abu Sarga
as a subject. Such a guide and such an American came
in while I was studying it. She was the kind of American
who cared nothing for Coptic churches or any old churches ;
she had only gone there because Ba:deker expected it of her,
and her township in the United States would examine her
when she got back to see that she had got up her lessons
properly.
The match w^as struck, the candle was coaxed into burning
up, and held between finger and thumb opposite a tortured
Byzantine figure.
Dragojuan. " Look at that work, madam."
Avierican. " I did " (nasal). " Inlaid ivory " (nasal), " and
wood " (nasal).
The dragoman, still with his candle, and not in the least
disappointed, without any further words led the way down to
the crypt.
American. " Need we go down there ? "
Dragoman. " Yes. Biklam, where Jesus Christ was born."
He meant Bethlehem. The American pricked up her ears
at the idea of seeing the place where our Lord was born,
though she ought to have remembered that the Bible does
not lay it in Egypt, and descended.
I followed them down the double descent to a crypt which
has good columns in pairs, with romancsque arches above them,
but no capitals. At the apse end the columns are replaced
by walls which contain niches. It was too crowded to see
much, but it seemed to contain a font.
" Come here. Mister," said the dragoman to the American
lady. " This is the baptise for Coptic children. No scharge for
Copts, so we cannot get near. Joseph has only a little side
apsey. Opposite Joseph's residence is a nichey for washing
of Jesus Christ."
The idea of the native guide-books is that the Holy Family