He Was Clad In What Seemed Like A Sort Of Cataract Of Multi- Colored Rags.

An enormous white beard flowed down over his shrunken breast.

His face was a mass of yellow wrinkles. His eyes were closed. His yellow fingers were twined about a wooden staff. Above his head was drawn a patched hood. Was he alive or dead? I could not tell, and I passed him on tiptoe. And going always with precaution between the tall, grey houses and beneath the lowering arches, I came at last to the Coptic church.

Near it, in the street, were several Copts - large, fat, yellow- skinned, apparently sleeping, in attitudes that made them look like bundles. I woke one up, and asked to see the church. He stared, changed slowly from a bundle to a standing man, went away and presently, returning with a key and a pale, intelligent-looking youth, admitted me into one of the strangest buildings it was ever my lot to enter.

The average Coptic church is far less fascinating than the average mosque, but the church of Abu Sargah is like no other church that I visited in Egypt. Its aspect of hoary age makes it strangely, almost thrillingly impressive. Now and then, in going about the world, one comes across a human being, like the white-bearded man beneath the arch, who might be a thousand years old, two thousand, anything, whose appearance suggests that he or she, perhaps, was of the company which was driven out of Eden, but that the expulsion was not recorded.

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