Trinity Hall

Coffee was brought before we took leave, and went down again to inspect our servants.

the cook a fragile-looking old man a christian from the lebanon seemed hardly strong enough for such an undertaking yet he bore the fatigue well and proved a better cook than some of us had ever had in our english households his two companions were stout and sturdy one an egyptian waiter from a hotel in cairo the other a nigger boy from the sudan ahmed called him his son and somebody told us afterwards the story of his adoption ahmed had traveled on the upper nile when his gun went off accidentally and grazed the head of a bystander it was a narrow escape and ahmed full of gratitude to allah prayed for a special opportunity of pleasing him in return for his mercies lately vouchsafed to his servant he had hardly risen from his knees when he saw a little slave ill-treated by his master he bought the child declared it free and brought it up as his own we often found this idea of doing god a service of giving him a pleasure connected with the simple faith of otherwise untaught mohammedans a physician from manchester an experienced oculist and his wife were staying at the same hotel with us they went about among the poor people and he cured or relieved many cases of ophthalmia without of course expecting any return the man who attended his donkey on these occasions became warmly attached to him and expressed his admiration by saying to the lady your husband he very good man he make god very glad i do not think any other praise could have sounded sweeter in her ears We told this simple story to several friends in Cambridge, and Dr. Latham of Trinity Hall, seeing its deeper significance, has handed it down to posterity in his beautiful and suggestive little book on the service of angels.

at length the camels and the stores were ready they started on their march toward suez and we arranged to follow three days later by the railway that now connects cairo with the canal this interval of comparative rest was most welcome to us we returned calls we made a few additions to our personal outfit such as blue glasses cork helmets and puggarees to protect ourselves from sunstroke and ophthalmia we filled a large box with our purchases from the bazaars with photographs and other little mementoes and despatched it to england and we wrote long letters to friends and relatives in different countries for we did not expect to have any means of communication with the civilized world after entering the desert beyond the red sea on january twenty ninth we left cairo and during the next hour we traversed the most fruitful part of lower egypt where three successive harvests ripen from year to year the fields were all green and golden with maize and lentils with melons and cucumbers and the water meadows were full of kine fat fleshed and well favored it is the goshen of the bible and the names of the stations still reminded our philologians of places mentioned in genesis and exodus soon after we plunged into the desert and we felt how hard it must have been for the israelites to leave the fleshpots of egypt the sand was blown into ridges and hillocks not unlike the waves of the sea only now and then as we approached or crossed the fresh-water canal did we see small patches of green this canal was in existence two thousand years before christ and it was retraced and restored not long ago chiefly for the benefit of the workers on the suez canal the stations now presented nothing but a few low huts but on one of the tall signposts we read in large letters arabic and english the name of tel el kabir it was strange to reflect on the cries of agony and fury on the slaughter and bloodshed that raged here but a few years ago now when the moving sands of the desert have effaced every trace of the struggle however a handsome monument has been erected at some distance from the station to mark the graves of the british soldiers at ismailia we touched the suez canal but a long line of telegraph poles above the low buildings on the wharf was all we could see from our windows we now turned sharp to the south saw on our left the shining waters of the bitter lake and could trace the canal itself by the clumps of trees on its banks and by the tall masts and smoke wreaths of passing vessels as soon as our train ran into the lively little station at suez ahmed appeared at the carriage door with his satellites he took charge of our persons and of our parcels kept the bachiche crying crowd at bay and led us safely to the little inn proudly styled hotel de l'orient where lodging and dinner had been prepared for us and we gladly gave ourselves up to his guidance with a comfortable feeling that with so competent a protector we need take no further care what we should eat nor how we should proceed on the morrow the inn was kept by a polite little greek its chief rooms opened into a kind of garden square furnished with rough wooden tables and benches and lit up at night by a few chinese lanterns here we stayed that evening busy in revising our saddle-bags and night-sacks they were filled for the greater part with the necessary books, dictionaries, grammars, and Bibles in different languages, early fathers, catalogs of manuscripts, and other learned works.

We restricted our wardrobe as much as possible, leaving every superfluous article in charge of the landlord, who insisted on writing an elaborate receipt in modern Greek for everything entrusted to his care.

My gloves she arranges daily in idiotic array upon a half-filled bookshelf, and I always have to rearrange them on the low table by the door.

She places my armchair at impossible angles between the fire and the light, and the tablecloth, the one with Trinity Hall stains, she puts on the table in such a fashion that when I look at it I feel as if my tie and all my clothes were on crooked and awry.

She exasperates me.

Her very silence and meekness are irritating.

The important people were some of my friends.

I had a very close friend, Jonathan Klein, undergraduate at Trinity Hall, which was a serious law college.

And so I met some of the people there who were doing law.

Corpus really wasn't a law college.

My gloves she arranges daily in idiotic array upon a half-filled bookshelf, and I always have to rearrange them on the low table by the door.

She places my armchair at impossible angles between the fire and the light, and the tablecloth, the one with Trinity Hall stains, she puts on the table in such a fashion that when I look at it I feel as if my tie and all my clothes were on crooked and awry.

She exasperates me.

Her very silence and meekness are irritating.