hanting picture as it
presents, and such wonderful beauty as it encloses. But all that is
modern. What fascinates me in Corfu is that opposite the entrance to
the old Hyllaean harbor lies the isle of Pontikonisi (Mouse Island),
with a small chapel and clergy-house. Tradition says that it is the
Phaeacian ship which brought Ulysses to Ithaka, and which was
afterwards turned into stone by the angry Poseidon (Neptune). The
brook Kressida at the point where it enters the lake is also pointed
out as the spot where Ulysses was cast ashore and met the Princess
Nausicaa. A seasick sort of name, that!

I feel an inexplicable delight in letting my imagination run riot in
the Greek traditions of their gods and goddesses. Their heroes are
more real to me than Caesar and Xerxes and Alexander. And Hermes and
Venus and the dwellers of Olympus have been such intimate friends
since my childhood that the scenes of their exploits are of much more
moment to me than Waterloo and Austerlitz. I cannot forbear laughing
at myself, however, for my holy rage over Greek mythology, as founded
upon no better ground than that upon which Mark Twain apologized for
his admiration for Fenimore Cooper's Indians, for he admitted that
they were a defunct race of beings which never had existed!

We arrived at Brindisi at four o'clock in the morning. Brindisi at
four o'clock in the morning is not pleasant, nor would any other city
be on the face of this green footstool. We were in quarantine, and we
had to cope with a cross stewardess, who declared that we demanded too
much service, and that she would _not_ bring us our coffee in bed, and
who then went and did it like an angel, so that we patted her on the
back and told her in French that she was "well amiable," although at
that hour in the morning we would have preferred to throttle her for
her impertinence, and then to throw her in the Adriatic Sea as a neat
little finish. Such, however, is our diplomatic course of travel.

We walked in line under the doctor's eye, and he pronounced us
sanitary and permitted us to land. We were four hours late, but we
scalded ourselves with a second cup of coffee and tried for the
six-o'clock train for Naples, missed it, sent a telegram to Cook to
send our letters to the train to meet us, and then went back to the
ship to endure with patience and commendable fortitude the jeers of
our fellow-passengers. Virtue was its own reward, however, for soon,
under the rays of the