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Updated: May 18, 2025
"I cannot tell you," replied his dragoman in a deprecating voice, "but this I will say: Inventors are not only the benefactors but the curses of mankind, and will be so long as we do not find a way of adapting their discoveries to our very limited digestive powers.
The party's dragoman proffered a cup of coffee and a cigarette. The former was excellent, the latter, after one puff, Jill extinguished on the floor, for she knew tobacco when she smoked it, and guessed at hasheesh without having to look at the slightly brightened eyes of those who sat smoking the same brand around her. Then she glanced curiously round the room.
Such being our heroine's mind about marriage, I make bold to say that she had behaved with skill and judgment, and not altogether heartlessly either. On the following morning, Sir Lionel and George left Jerusalem together. The colonel had his own servant, as he always had; George was followed by the dragoman, who had now been with him for some time; and each had also an Arab groom.
"Would you say, then," insinuated the Angel, "that a man is happy when he meets a mad bull in a narrow lane? For there will surely be much pressure of life to the square inch." "It does not follow," responded his dragoman; "for at such moments one is prone to stand apart, pitying himself and reflecting on the unevenness of fortune.
He was one of those dragomans who are accustomed to the civilized expeditions of the British tourist to the first or second cataract, in a Nile boat replete with conveniences and luxuries, upon which the dragoman is monarch supreme, a whale among the minnows, who rules the vessel, purchases daily a host of unnecessary supplies, upon which he clears his profit, until he returns to Cairo with his pockets filled sufficiently to support him until the following Nile season.
After this, silence reigned for a few minutes, and I had stealthily begun to work on the biggest rug-label, when arose a clamour of voices and presently appeared the dragoman lent by Slaney. "Eight ladies wishing hot-water bottles," he explained. But there were no hot-water bottles. We had thought of everything, it seemed, except hot-water bottles. "I tell them very sorry but can't have?"
" You tell him," she then said to her dragoman, " to sit in a corner and not to speak until I tell him to, or I won't have him in here." She seemed anxious to unburden herself to the old lady companion. " Do you know," she said, " that girl has a nerve like steel. I tried to break it there in that inn, but I couldn't budge her.
Not having eaten anything since noon, my dragoman begins at once to prepare a light lunch for us. On a brazier that he finds here he makes a little charcoal fire and quickly brews some of the tea brought from Damascus; into this he squeezes lemon juice; then finding some bread that he had stowed away in his saddle-bags, our lunch is ready.
Oh, shameful, shameful ending, after such unseemly boasting! It was too much like "Ho! let me at him!" followed by a prudent "Two of you hold him one can hold me!" Instantly there was wailing and gnashing of teeth in the camp. The two Napoleons were offered more if necessary and pilgrims and dragoman shouted themselves hoarse with pleadings to the retreating boatmen to come back.
"Does nothing else ever happen on these stages?" "Nothing. Stay! Revues happen!" "What are revues?" asked the Angel. "Criticisms of life, sir, as it would be seen by persons inebriated on various intoxicants." "They should be joyous." "They are accounted so," his dragoman replied; "but for my part, I prefer to criticise life for myself, especially when I am drunk."
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