Letter from Dora Giffen to her brother John Willard Giffen and the rest of her family at home in New Concord, Ohio, October 7, 1921

34 Geziret Badran, Shubra
Friday, Oct. 7, 1921

Dear Willard and All:

Willard, I don’t believe I have written to you since I received your last letter that I appreciated so much. This letter will have to be for the family, too, since I can’t seem to manage more than one letter a week now. This is a good opportunity to thank you for your half of the Muscoljuan. I do enjoy very much reading and looking thru it. It is a very good book and I thank you again. It is fine for you, I think, that you are teaching in Cambridge this year and that you are planning to stay at home and go back and forth in a run-about. Just think how much in after years you will appreciate being at home this year. I am thinking that our old house is going to be pretty full this year and I wonder just where you will stay; or have I interpreted what Mother said wrongly and are you just going back and forth during week-ends.

I do appreciate the clippings that Mother has enclosed in her last two letters. She is a very busy Mother and I have been wondering if oftentimes it would not be easier for her to send clippings than to write about what has happened. I wish she did not have to write to me so often, but I am too selfish to tell her to stop doing it, for I hardly know how I would get along without her letters. By the way, Mother, that brown and tan dress is too good for an everyday dress. I am going to wear it for a “dress-up” dress this year. I am wearing to school my pink tussah dress, my old checked blue and white dress which has faded in the last two washes until it is practically white now, my two white skirts, and some of my older white waists such as the one in which I had my last photograph in America taken. It is getting cool enough here now in the evenings to wear light wraps, so I am going to get my blue suit and my sweaters out of their summer abiding places tomorrow.

I have a good many things that I have planned to do tomorrow. I must write an Arabic composition and prepare the story of Jairus’s daughter in Arabic; write at least two letters – one to Mrs. Hart and one to Dora Whitely; do a little fixing up and pressing of clothes; and then spend all afternoon in the drawing-room besides. Tomorrow is our “at-home” day and we are expecting a good many native people to call.

Mrs. Hart is in Assiut Hospital, so I heard on Wed., with something that perhaps may be diabetis. She is to stay in the hospital for at least a month and Mr. Hart has had to go on up country on the “Witness” without her. This rather breaks in on any plan to spend two weeks or so on the boat before my examination in November. So I have been thinking that probably I will go to the Fayoum the last week in October and stay there for a week. I can get a good deal of practice work of one kind and another down in Khroonfish. On Wed. afternoon of this week I visited the school for a little while, and then went back on Thurs. afternoon to take the teacher some more Arabic books (for there are thirty children in the school now); and then stayed for a little while visiting at the house of the teacher. I want to do more house-visiting there very soon now. We have one deaf boy and one blind girl in the school that I think a great deal of. In fact most of the children at Khroonfish are very attractive.

On September 7th I received a letter from Dora Whitely that she sent on Aug. 24th. Quite good time, I think, in fact record breaking time. I must answer the letter. Perhaps I will enclose hers in this tomorrow. Just for fun I will send a note that I received from Mrs. Ewing two or three weeks ago.

I received a letter from Janey Trace yesterday, asking for a letter for our Class of ’19 letter, which it seems is to be in printed form this year. I must write that soon. I wonder how long it should be. Janey did not say.

Uncle Johns got word this Wed. that Miss Carrie Buchanan was leaving London on that day for Egypt, so she will be arriving before long.

I called on the Galts on Wed. afternoon. Little Miriam is a good baby and a very sweet one. Their new furniture from America came when Lois was at the hospital. By the time she reached home everything was in place and their flat (just across the street from the Lorimer’s flat) looked so cozy and nice. R.G. had worked hard to get things ready for Lois.

We have been having a little company this week. On Wed. night Martha Glass and Edna Sherriff were here for supper. Avis seems to be gradually getting back her old strength but she is not attending many social functions of any sort whatsoever in order to conserve her energy. She is not in the “School of Oriental Studies” but is taking one lesson a day at home. Tonight Miss Margaret Bell and Sara Adair were here for supper. This morning Sara happened to be at the University when three of us were starting home, so she brought us home in the car.

The Chorlians called on us yesterday afternoon. They are in Cairo for a few days on their way to Assiut where Mr. Chorlian is going for a change and rest and his family with him.

Miss Taft, Miss McMillan’s cousin, is in Cairo again and was here for dinner today. She is not a missionary to China but had been there for a year or two, being company for a missionary cousin there who had just sent her children home to America. This afternoon she, Mrs. Coventry, Miss Lightowler, and Miss Garrett went to the Pyramids. Miss Gray, Miss Noordewier, Evelyn, and Fay have all been sick ever since Tues. with a form of tonsilitis. Dr. Brown was over to see them and ordered them to be kept away from us as much as possible. All are better and all but Evelyn were down at supper tonight. The rest of us are all keeping well. Clarice had a touch of the sore throat when she left for Mansourah yesterday, for a week’s visit.

I attended a sad funeral this afternoon. Mrs. Bader, the wife of our American Consul here in Cairo, died yesterday evening and was buried in our American cemetery this afternoon at four o’clock. She leaves twin boys three weeks old and Mr. Bader is practically alone here in Cairo. Several of our missionaries were at the funeral (services at the cemetery) and not very many others. Those in charge, not being acquainted with Egyptian ways, had left everything in the hands of the undertaker, so of course nothing had been done at the cemetery, except the grave was dug. Mr. Hoyman and Frank Henry got busy when they arrived at the cemetery and fixed things up a little. Uncle John read some portions of Scripture and led in prayer; then a Catholic priest present went thru a certain ritual. Mrs. Bader was a Catholic. They say she was a very sweet little Southern woman.

Martin is a member of the largest Freshman class Muskingum has ever had I believe. Congratulations, Martin. I would have liked to have been with you in at least the opening days of school. May both you boys enjoy your work this year. Lots of love to you and all from Dora.


Dear Miss Giffen,
Thank you very much for your card & good wishes for my nineteenth birth day, having lived so long in Alexandria I was very glad to get a picture [illegible] of Cherif Pasha Street. I do hope you are quite well, & beginning to feel at home in Egypt.

Sincerely, affectionately yours

Catherine A. B. Ewing

(P.S.) Mr. S. W. Gentle-Cackett, F.R.G.S., a member of some missionary society in England, having visited and been a missionary also in several fields during his lifetime (Egypt being one of the fields) visited our mission in Cairo for a few days this week on his way home to England from some place where he has been doing substitute mission work for some time. I thought maybe you, Father or Mother, might have known him in Egypt since he has always been deeply interested in our mission. He gave a good talk in our prayer-meeting last Thurs. night.

A new man from Australia as arrived as a teacher in our American University here (turn a page)
(continued from the back of this letter)

I (don’t know) forget his name but he is being given charge of the “School of Oriental Studies.” He just arrived this week and knew no Arabic when he came but he is brilliant when it comes to languages and he is picking up the Arabic very quickly. He knows at least a dozen languages, knowing well enough to speak them all of the European languages. It would be rather nice to have his ability for a year or two just now.
Love,
Dora