He’s just sent for me to come, and I must stop soon. Say, he hasn’t had sleep for a fortnight. It’s too much; he can’t stand it. I tried it, and couldn’t. It wore me down. He’s killing himself for others. I can’t manage him; but I guess you could. I apologise, dear Lady Cousin. I’m only a hayseed, and a failure, but I guess you’ll understand that I haven’t thought only of myself as I wrote this letter. The higher you go in life the more you’ll understand; that’s your nature. I’ll get this letter off by a nigger to-morrow, with those the Saadat is sending through to Cairo by some friendlies. It’s only a chance; but everything’s chance here now. Anyhow, it’s safer than leaving it till the scrimmage. If you get this, won’t you try and make the British Government stand by the Saadat? Your husband, the lord, could pull it off, if he tried; and if you ask him, I guess he’d try. I must be off now. David Pasha will be waiting. Well, give my love to the girls!
P. S.--I’ve got a first-class camel for our scrimmage day after to-morrow. Mustafa sent it to me this morning. I had a fight on mules once, down at Oaxaca, but that was child’s play. This will be “slaughter in the pan,” if the Saadat doesn’t stop it somehow. Perhaps he will. If I wasn’t so scared I’d wish he couldn’t stop it, for it will be a way-up Barbarian scrap, the tongs and the kettle, a bully panjandrum. It gets mighty dull in the desert when you’re not moving. But “it makes to think,” as the French say. Since I came out here I’ve had several real centre thoughts, sort of main principles-key-thoughts, that’s it. What I want now is a sort of safety-ring to string ‘em on and keep ‘em safe; for I haven’t a good memory, and I get mighty rattled sometimes. Thoughts like these are like the secret of a combination lock; they let you into the place where the gold and securities and title-deeds of life are. Trouble is, I haven’t got a safety-ring, and I’m certain to lose them. I haven’t got what you’d call an intellectual memory. Things come in flashes to me out of experiences, and pull me up short, and I say, “Yes, that’s it--that’s it; I understand.” I see why it’s so, and what it means, and where it leads, and how far it spreads. It’s five thousand years old. Adam thought it after Cain killed Abel, or Abel thought it just before he died, or Eve learned it from Lilith, or it struck Abraham when he went to sacrifice Isaac. Sometimes things hit me deep like that here in the desert. Then I feel I can see just over on the horizon the tents of Moab in the wilderness; that yesterday and to-day are the same; that I’ve crossed the prairies of the everlasting years, and am playing about with Ishmael in the wild hills, or fighting with Ahab. Then the world and time seem pretty small potatoes.