there the women gossip and twitter like the birds. And the buffalo comes
to take his sun-bath; and the goats and the curly, brown sheep pass in
sprightly and calm processions. The obelisk there, like its brother in
Paris, presides over a cheerfulness of life; but it is a life that seems
akin to it, not alien from it. And the king watches the simplicity of
this keen existence of Egypt of to-day far up the Nile with a calm that
one does not fear may be broken by unsympathetic outrage, or by any
vision of too perpetual foreign life. For the tourists each year are but
an episode in Upper Egypt. Still the shadoof-man sings his ancient song,
violent and pathetic, bold as the burning sun-rays. Still the fellaheen
plough with the camel yoked with the ox. Still the women are covered
with protective amulets and hold their black draperies in their mouths.
The intimate life of the Nile remains the same. And that life obelisk
and king have known for how many, many years!

And so I love to think of this intimacy of life about the temple of the
happy dancers and the humble little wives, and it seems to me to strike
the keynote of the golden coziness of Luxor.




IX

COLOSSI OF MEMNON

Nevertheless, sometimes one likes to escape from the thing one loves,
and there are hours when the gay voices of Luxor fatigue the ears, when
one desires a great calm. Then there are silent voices that summon
one across the river, when the dawn is breaking over the hills of