Excerpt from The Story of Cairo

Cairo is in the fullest sense a medi?val city. It had no existence before the Middle Ages; its vigorous life as a separate Metropolis almost coincides with the arbitrary millennium of the middle period of history; and it still retains to this day much of its medi?val character and aspect. The aspect is changing, but not the life. The amazing improvements of the past twenty years have altered the Egyptians material condition, but scarcely as yet touched his character. For all these, and especially the last, the peasant is grateful in his way, when their merits are pointed out to him; but not so the Cairene. The immediate blessings of the irrigation engineer are not so prominently brought to bear upon his pressing wants, and for the other reforms of the Firengy he cares very little. I should be sorry to draw any discourteous comparisons with "the Ethiop," but whatever time and association with Europeans may do for the comely, and to my taste none too swarthy, skin of my Cairo friend, I am convinced that he will keep his old unregenerate medi?val heart in spite of us all.

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