_Tuesday, 10th._--Sketched. A frequent companion in my work is my friend, little Fatma, a sweet, small child of about five, with a bright face and two rows of the whitest teeth ever seen. She squats down snugly by my side, sometimes looking at the picture, sometimes at the painter, most often at the paint-box, at which she twiddles silently; sometimes she pensively draws a pattern with a little brown finger on my dusty boots. I remember at Rhodes, last year, a knot of little girls used to watch me sketching in the Street of the Knights; but the little Turks were not so nice as Fatma, the little Arab; some used to giggle, and some used to frown at the Djiaour; but one very chatty young lady of about six with the manners and graces of sixteen would exclaim in a little fluty voice, "Mash Allah! Mash Allah! beautiful indeed! nobody here can write like you!" (Turk., if my memory helps me: _Guzel! guzel! Bir khimse burda senci zhibi yazamas!_) I had a visit on board the other day from Mustafa Aga's youngest son, bonny and rosy as an apple. He wore a flowing robe of linen, _à ramages_, buttoned summarily and once for all at the neck, but entirely open from the neck downwards; over this an enormous embroidered jacket with anticipatory sleeves turned up at the wrists, and on, or rather about, his feet, a pair of his papa's shoes; he was irresistibly funny and pretty; an _amorino_, dressed up as the Dog Toby. He was very chatty; not so his playfellow, "Genani," the son of Abdallah, the servant of Mustafa, a putto by Raphael modelled in chocolate; a wild, black-eyed, trembling, romping, dusty, stark-naked little imp (I used to call him Afreet), and the finest child I ever saw. The nearest approach to social intercourse I could get out of him was a sudden plunge at a proffered cake; after which he would dart off with affected dismay, and frown at me through an ill-suppressed grin from behind the nearest place of safety.
_Wednesday, 11th._--Got on with my sketches. Have begun two or three rough small studies of heads. Hate sketching heads rapidly; it is unavoidably and odiously free and easy, and nearly all that is worth escapes. But I have no time for more, and, I suppose, the sketches will be useful. One man, with a face like a camel, whom I drew in profile, was annoyed (though in a general way complimentary) at seeing only one eye in the picture. This struck me as quaint; for he was _blind_ of the other; he had not been defrauded of much. My delight, in the evening, is to watch the processions of women and girls coming down to the Nile to fetch water. The brown figures, clad in brown, coming, in long rows, along the brown bank in all the glow and glory of sunset, look very grand; very grand, too, returning up the steep bank, along the violet sky, with their long, flowing folds and the full pitchers now erect on their heads (when empty they carry them horizontally). They are neither handsome individually nor particularly well made, but their movements are good, and the repetition of the same "motive" many times in succession makes the whole scene impressive and stately. There is no more fruitful source of effect in Nature or Art than iteration.