We saw Pharaoh today. The very one that oppressed the Israelites. His body lies in the museum at Cairo. Visible are the very teeth that he gnashed against the Israelitish brickmakers, the sockets of the merciless eyes with which he looked upon the overburdened people of God, "the hair that floated in - the breeze off the Red Sea, the very lips with which he commanded them to make bricks without straw. Thousands of years after, when the wrappings of the mummy were unrolled, old Pharaoh lifted up his arm as if in imploration, but his skinny bones cannot again clutch his shattered sceptre.
On a camel's back on the way to Memphis, Egypt, I am writing this. How many millions have crossed the desert on this style of beast! Proud, mysterious, solemn, ancient, ungainly, majestic and ridiculous shape, stalking out of the past. The driver with his whip taps the camel on the fore-leg and he kneels to take you. But when he rises, hold fast, or you will first fall off backward as he puts his fore-feet in standing position, and then you will fall off in front as his back legs take their place. Not a house or an inhabitant in all Memphis, though it was the mightiest city under the sun. I bring away a few stones from Pharaoh's palace, and recall, as well as I can, the once gorgeous capital of Egypt.
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