AN ANCIENT LADY. 36 1 



room, blazing with gas-light, brilliant dresses, jewelry, and 

 all the adornments of modern life. It seemed odd to be 

 lying on a rock in an old temple and yet so near to the 

 modern world. I asked myself, are they after all very 

 different people, that gay crowd at the Profile, from the 

 men and women who thronged the old temple? We 

 people of the nineteenth century are guilty of folly in our 

 self-admiration, and vastly err in placing ourselves far in 

 advance of all ages. Steam-engines and telegraphs and 

 printing-presses are mighty powers, but the day and the 

 place are far distant from which man will look back on 

 this little world and judge impartially of the various evi- 

 dences of various civilizations. Even now we can see bar- 

 barism in our own governments, and in our own houses, if 

 we will but look at ourselves. I doubt very much whether 

 the Egyptian lady from whose head I once took a curl of 

 hair was not as refined, as civilized, as polished three thou- 

 sand years ago as any lady in the Profile House to-night ? 

 Here lies the curl before me as I write — a dark brown 

 lock, which lights in the sun to-day as it lit when she was 

 living ages ago. Her head was covered with curls. Be- 

 fore they wrapped her face in the grave-clothes, loving 

 fingers twined all the dark masses of her hair into just 

 such curls as she loved to wear, speaking, we should say 

 in our day, of youth, gayety, grace, and loveliness. For a 

 curl speaks. Around it, as it lies there, is a halo, from 

 which I can hear voices uttering many evidences of civil- 

 ization. She lived in luxury; she wore purple and fine 

 linen ; she had jewels on her fingers, and, though she 

 never imitated the civilization of modern Africa, which 

 wears rings in the nose, she was guilty of the barbarism 

 of piercing holes in her ears whereon to hang gold and 

 jewels to be looked at and admired. 



