I detest civilization except for my own selfish
bodily comfort. When I eat and sleep I want the creature comforts.
Otherwise I love those thieving Arab servants in Cairo (who would
steal the very shoes off your feet if you dropped off for your forty
winks) because of their uncivilization and unconventionality.
Civilization has not yet spoiled them. I bought rugs in Cairo, and
often when I went unexpectedly into my room I found my Arab
man-servant on his knees studying their patterns and feeling their
silkiness. I had everything locked up, or perhaps he would have made
worse use of his time; but somehow the childishness of the East
appeals to me.
Constantinople is so delightfully dirty and old. Mrs. Jimmie sniffs at
me because I can stop the peasants who lead their cows through the
streets of Naples, and because I can drink a glass of warm milk; Mrs.
Jimmie wants hers strained. But if I can eat "Turkish Delight" in
Constantinople, buying it in the bazaars, seeing it cut off the huge
sticky mass with rusty lamp-scissors, perhaps dropped on the
dirt-floor, and in a moment of abstraction polished off on the Turk's
trousers and rolled in soft sugar to wrap the real in the ideal--if I
can cope with _that_ problem, surely a trifle like drinking unstrained
milk, with the consoling satisfaction of stopping the carriage in an
adorable spot, with the blue waters of the bay curling up on its shore
down below on the right, and a sheer cliff covered with moss and
clinging vines and surmounted by a superb villa on the left, is
nothing.
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