book--'While the Lamp Holds out to Burn'--was suggested to me by an
incident which I saw at a certain village on the Nile, which I will not
name. Suffice it to say that the story in the main was true. Also the
chief incident of the story, called 'The Price of the Grindstone--and the
Drum', is true. The Mahommed Seti of that story was the servant of a
friend of mine, and he did in life what I made him do in the tale.
'On the Reef of Norman's Woe', which more than one journal singled out as
showing what extraordinary work was being done in Egypt by a handful of
British officials, had its origin in something told me by my friend Sir
John Rogers, who at one time was at the head of the Sanitary Department
of the Government of Egypt.

I could take the stories one by one, and show the seeds from which this
little plantation of fiction sprang, but I will not go further than to
refer to a story called 'Fielding Had an Orderly', the idea of which was
contained in the experience of a British official whose courage was as
cool as his wit, and both were extremely dangerous weapons, used at times
against those who were opposed to him. When I read a book like 'Said the
Fisherman', however, with its wonderfully intimate knowledge of Oriental
life and the thousand nuances which only the born Orientalist can give,
I look with tempered pride upon Donovan Pasha. Still I think that it
caught and held some phases of Egyptian life which the author of 'Said
the Fisherman' might perhaps miss, since the observation of every artist
has its own idiosyncrasy, and what strikes one observer will not strike
another.




A FOREWORD