Thompson, Joseph P.: Photographic views of Egypt, past and present (Boston, 1854)

CHILD KEN.

53

when you are sweltering with the heat, the Egyptian will
Wrap his woollen garment close about him, if this is all he
has. It is not the mere nakedness of the children that
annoys you; but their squalor, and the shiftless condition in
which they seem to grow up ; and especially the swarms
of flies that cover their eyes, noses, mouths, ears, and turn
their faces into running sores. This is probably one cause
of ophthalmia, the plague of Egypt.

The heads of the boys are shaved, and covered with little
caps. The little girls are always clad in some way, and the
boys don't seem to know the difference. Indeed children
will be happy somehow, and it is a blessed thing that they
can be. But oh for Sabbath schools and boys' meetings in
this land of degradation! It is the thought of what these
naked sore-eyed urchins are to be in their condition here,
and their destiny hereafter, that makes your eyes water and
your heart bleed as you look upon them ; — for just now,
that destitute and crying child, whose mother soothes it
under the folds of her own soiled and tattered mantle, may
be more favored than the best dressed and tended child that
no longer knows a mother's love.

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