Item 02: Oliver Hogue letters, 15 April-3 August 1915 - Page 5

[Page 5]

2.

and teased him till he was mad as a march hare. The conversation as far as I can remember it was something like this:

Dragoman:- "You like Scarab?"

Unsophisticated Australian:- "No Scab here, all good unionists."

Dragoman:- "Not scab: Scarab, good scarab."

U.A.: "Oh."

D.    : "Beautiful scarab. Very precious."

U.A.: "Ah."

D.    :" I buy them for English officer: beautiful scarab. Now he go to Suez Canal. I sell cheap."

U.A.: "Very cheap?"

D.      : "Yes, very cheap. Sell now, lose plenty money Sir."

U.A.: "Oh don't do that. Try and make a little profit."

D.    : "No Sir, no profit. Here look beautiful scarab for 5 POUNDS"

U.A.: "But is it really worth the 5 PIASTRES."

D.    : "PIASTRES.  Ach, no, no, no 5 POUNDS."

U.A.: "What, per dozen.?"

D.    : "No, no, no, 5 pound for one beautiful scarab."

U.A.: "You must be a fine humourist, ha, ha."

D.      : "Not ha, ha, This beautiful scarab is 3,000 years old. Time of Ramses II."

U.A.: "Yes, too old. Got any nice new  ones?"

D.    : "No, no. Not new. Old, very valuable, 3,000 years"

U.A.: "yes, too old. Show me a new one."

D.      : You no understand. Very old, very valuable."

U.A.: "Looks a bit motheaten, don't it?"

D.    : "Not so. Very, very old. Out of the tombs in pyramid."

U.A.: "Any more there?"

D.    : "No more, all gone."

U.A.: "Oh well, I oughtn't to take them from you."

D.      : "Yesll I sell you for 5 pounds."

U.A.: "I'll bet you dont."

D.    : "Well this one, 4 pounds."

U.A.: "Try, try, try again."

D.    : "Well I sell you 3 pound ten."

U.A.: "You might, but I don't think so."

D.    : "What you say?"

U.A.: "I'm trying to say NO."

D.    : "Well, 3 pound, cheap."

U.A.: "Say, you're great on reductions, Aren't you."

D.    : "Three pound. Finish."

U.A.: "Finish, my bonnie brown eyed  liar, but no business  this time."

Would you believe it the old fool went away muttering angrily in his  beard. He wanted me to give him 3 good golden quid for a little stone like a petrified beetle. Perhaps it was genuine, perhaps not. If genuine it was probably worth whatever a fool Curio Collector would give, perhaps 30/-. But it might have been a fake. The Gyppies are wonderfully clever at faking antiquities and curios. In the Museum at Cairo are genuine thousand year-old relics from the tombs and pyramids. But the Gyppies copy them and sell the replicas as genuine. When I was leaving the museum a dragoman sneaked up to me and in a most mysterious way thrust an antiquated statuette into my hand and whispered hoarsely: "5 shillings" He wanted me to think it genuine and, I suppose stolen. So right on the spur of the moment I bluffed a treat; I examined it with the concentrated gaze of a connoisseur  Egyptologist, scratched it with my knife  and then exclaimed "Bah, rubbish, 1 piastro." The old sinner eagerly cried "Yes yes: and held out his hand for the money. So I got a fraud which when you see it you will readily believe to be genuine. He went away quite/