EGYPT 257 



loathsome trade are all in transit. They are 

 not displayed in the shop-windows of the foul- 

 smelling streets and dark alleyways of Satan, 

 the landlord of all this seaport. 



For a time they are stored away " in bond " 

 as well as in bondage. Their days come and 

 they sail away. They sink into the slough of 

 the Orient, and some come back in the fulness 

 of the years. They are no longer fair to look on, 

 unless the shop-window of life is gilded and 

 curtained and made to throw some of its own 

 brilliance on the painted goods behind the gaudy 

 glass. It is then that their sorry souls are put 

 up for auction in this seaport of shame. 



Many of these wrecks of womanhood, these 

 misled wretches who have uprooted the choicest 

 flower that God planted in His garden, have 

 brought back all the suffering and sin of the East 

 with them. They are not women — they are 

 harpies, vultures with women's breasts and 

 women's faces. They have sold their lives for 

 gold, and the gold melted away as rapidly as 

 did their good looks. Milton must have had 

 such in mind when he penned those lines in 

 Paradise Lost — 



" Woman to the waist and fair, 

 But ending foul in many a scaly fold 

 Voluminous and vast ; a serpent armed 

 With mortal sting." 



A woman's face is not always her fortune, as 

 the nursery rhyme has it of the dairymaid. It 

 is as often her yoke of misery. Many a broken 

 soul has reviled the good God who gave her 

 comeliness and beauty. Port Said is full of 

 what were once women whose greatest curse was 

 the possession of a pretty face. These are the 



