n abroad is constantly
called upon to praise the wharves, piers, and landing-stages, and with
the same breath to condemn as disgraces to civilization the like
nautical platforms of his own country, when he is so often obliged, on
foreign shores, to embark and disembark by means of a tossing small boat
or a crowded tender, whereas at home, with the aid of those same
makeshift constructions for whose short-comings he is supposed to blush,
he walks on board of his steamship with no trouble whatever?

Early the next morning, awakening on a shelf in a red velvet cupboard, I
was explaining to myself vaguely that the cupboard was a dream, when
there appeared through the port-hole a picture of such fairy-tale beauty
that the dream became lyrical--it began to sing:

"Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live!"

At last those famous lines were actualities, for surely this was the sea
of the Jumblies, and those heights without doubt were "the hills of
Chankly Bore." (There are people, I believe, who do not care for the
Jumblies. There are persons who do not care for Alice in Wonderland, nor
for Brer Rabbit, when he played on his triangle down by the brook.)

The sea which I saw was of a miraculously blue tint; in the distance the
cliffs of a mountainous island rose boldly from the water, their color
that of a violet pansy; a fishing-boat with red sails was crossing the
foreground; over all glittered an atmosphere so golden that it was like
that of sunset in other lands, though the sky, at the same time, had
unmistakably the purity of early morning. Later, on the deck, during the
broadly practical time of after breakfast, this view, instead of
diminishing in attraction, grew constantly more fair. The French
novelist of to-day, Paul Bourget, describes Corfu as "so lovely that one
wants to take it in one's arms!" Another Frenchman, who was not given to
the making of phrases, no less a personage than Napoleon Bonaparte, has
left upon record his belief that Corfu has "the most beautiful situation
in the world." What, then, is this beauty? What is this situation?

[Illustration: PART OF THE TOWN OF CORFU]

First, there is the long and charming approach, with the snow-capped
mountains of Albania, in European Turkey, looming up against the sky at
the end; then comes the landlocked harbor; then the picturesque old
town, its high stone houses, all of creamy hue, crowded together on the
hill-side above t