The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-06-06
AN ICONOCLAST IN EGYPT.

George I'll. Buffers Notwithstanding Num-
mics to the "Boys' at Home.
Nym Crinkle in New York World.
He inspected Alexandria very much as he
would have gone Summing He took In that
ancient city, bigger at one time than Rome, and
stretching still in broken lines from what were
once the palm groves of Pharos to the Libyan
scenes of Canobus-liKe the outspread cloak of
Macedonian horseman-and he remarked that
it ought to be "shook up"
My feeble pen utterly refuses to put into COM
prehensible narration the exact methods adopted
by George to shake up Cairo and Alexandria
Wild stories came across the ocean at intervals
of his progress in undermining the customs of
the Copts. Now and then American officers re-
turned with strange accounts their lips of
how George had taken the Khedive's yacht and
gone up the Nile with brass band and a choice
crowd. and had cleaned out every village be-
tween Cairo and Karnac while the band played
the "Star-spangled Banner" of how they had
poured quarts of extra dry" down the throat of
the Sphinx. while the chorus went up weirdly
over the debris of the past of Rally Round the
Flag, Boys"
In the yellow dusks of that sunset land can
see the dark-eyed Rose Eytinge sitting a
broken block of marble where nineteen hundred
years ago the magnificent cangia of Cleopatra
swept over the turbulent waters, and Chairman
swung her fan of tropical feathers, and where
now the drowsy scent of the mummied earth
fills the air with the faint opiate of the for
gotten.
Strange Orient dreams must have swept like
phantors, sun-tipped, through the brain of the
American woman, cast there on memorial
shore by the mad incidents of American life.
But her husband was sending mummies to the
boys at home. There wasn't politician or prize
fighter that didn't get one. i think John Morris
sey had four, and there was a chop house on the
Sixth avenue that had three. George sent the
descriptions with them. This. said he on one
occasion, lis the dried carcass of Ramesis l. He
10 RI have hoe hIph al 1rffa nd mn p-
ried his own sister. He's we'll preserved. Set
him up with the boys. He has fine Rembrandt
expression on three-quarter view. Get Sarony
to pose him."
traditions of Egypt. 1t has a far-away odor.
But there must be official memoranda in the
State Department that beat the far-famed dis
patches Of John Phenix-Orienral intrigues;
Arabian nights variations of Americans who
came back; Monte Cristo schemes of English
consul, who invariably drank too
much champagne at the wrong time;
beautiful adventuresses from Italy, France and
England; story of one magnificent Greek
who could not understand word she said, but
who went and engaged Greek secretary who
stole all his correspondence and came to Ameri-
ca with it.
By and by George came home quietly. There
was discreet hush about it, and he turned up
at the Aston House with the "boys" one day.
Then, to put it broadly, he plunged into Bo.
heman literature and champagne. But life
seemed to have lost its zest. After man
has rustled the Pharoahs, Union square is dull
When man has astounded the past and the
present simultaneously. the merely contempt
raneous human interest of New York is weak.
/ met the consul one morning, a few years
later at the Morton House. He had just come
downstairs. He was unwashed, and had black
eye. The ecstacy of thirst was still on him, and
saw him borrow Is cents to get drink.
An English engineer told me afterwards that
he was in Egypt with Butler, and that he but
lerl could have made million of dollars there
had he chosen. Enormous sums were being ex-
pended, not only by the Khedive, but by En-
glish and American competitors for the vice
royal patronage.
It is morally certain that George did not make
a cent. He came back poor, and he died penni-
less and deserted. The boys scarcely stood by