Excerpt from Hotep: A Dream of the Nile

To the vile dust from which he sprung, Unwept, unhonored and unsung.

As we stand before all that remains of the glory of those far off days, dreams of the mys terious past of the old nation steals softly over us, the mind conjures with the hieroglyphics that so hesitatingly disclose the secrets of her history, and the imagination builds with a strange infatuation, upon that which lies behind the partially lifted veil, that still hides much of her ancient splendor. The oriental magnificence that made brilliant the courts of her Pharaohs, the mechanical attainments that evolved and completed her Pyramids of stately grandeur, the aesthetic taste that produced her Obelisks of graceful beauty, and the barbaric instinct that made possible the human sacrifice of the Bride of the Nile, join themselves together ina weird, wild dance of an ever changing fantasy. All about are the imperishable evidences of the realty of her former greatness, but the shadows of the ages fall darkly over those days - they ¿it like uneasy spirits across the musty pages of her history - and we dream on.

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