aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

ANCIENT SCIENCE IN EGYPT. 313
TALKERS. — EASTERN LIARS. — 3IARK TWAIN.
These everlasting talkers, who run all to
tongue, continually
put one in mind of a swinging sign on the hotel abandoned.
They are the Cheap-Johns of civic life. Sap
drizzles and drops. Limber-lipped talkers talk what they
know, and what they do not know ; talk what they imagine,
what they suspect, what they infer, what they dream, what
they have done, and what they intend to do, making themselves
the heroes of all tales told. Men like Alcott and
Emerson, substantially great, are retiring and modest. Deep
rivers roll silently. The lightnings are voiceless. God
never speaks. Anything, then, but a talkative, self-conceited
egotist, who, to put it alphabetically, shows off at A, spills
out at B, slops over at C, runs sediments at D, and then
repeats and re-repeats, commencing with the ego^ and all —
all this— to seem " "
smart !
If David in his " haste " said, " All men are liars," I
say it deliberately of all the " dragomen " and guides
employed by us in the East. Many would both falsify and
steal.
Charity compels the opinion, however, that some of
their misstatements were grounded in ignorance, rather than
willfulness. Take this sample : Standing near the dome of
the Grand Mosque in Benares, and surveying the city circling
the bend of the Ganges, we inquired of our guide the
number of the population. " Six millions ! " was the prompt
reply. " What ? " we doubtingly inquired. " Six — six millions^
sir ! " was the emphatic response. It was provokingly
annoying. London, the largest city in the world, has less
than three millions and a half. When looking up to the
summit of Pompey's Pillar in Alexandria, Dr. Dunn inquired
the hight. " Ten miles : he be ten miles high," was the
ready answer. This Arab guide neither knew the real
hight, nor the use of the English language. His professed
guidance, therefore, was an imposition.
Mark Twain does full justice to the "sheiks," to the