sir, they'd not
cheat the 'Hellenes' as they do the French and the English; and as the
only true way to reform a nation is to make vice unprofitable, I'd unite
them to a race that could outrogue and outwit them on every hand. What
is it, I ask you, makes of the sluggish, indolent, careless Irishman,
the prudent, hard-working, prosperous fellow you see him in the States?
Simply the fact, that the craft by which he outwitted John Bull no
longer serves him. The Yankee is too shrewd to be jockeyed by it, and
Paddy must use his hands instead of his head. The same would happen with
the Italian. Give him a Greek master, and you'll see what he'll become."

"But the Greeks, after all," said I, "do not present such a splendid
example of order and prosperity. They are little better than brigands."

"And don't you see why?" broke he in. "Have you ever looked into a
gambling-house when the company had no 'pigeon,' and were obliged to
play against each other. They have lost all decency--all the semblance
of good manners and decorum. Whatever little politeness they had put
on to impose upon the outsider was gone, and there they were in all the
naked atrocity of their bad natures. It is thus you see the Greeks. You
have dropped in upon them unfairly; you have invaded a privacy they had
hoped might be respected. Give them a nation to cheat, however; let
the pigeon be introduced, and you'll not see a better bred and a more
courtly people in Europe."

That they had great social qualities he proceeded to show from a number
of examples. They were, in fact, in the world of long ago what the
French are to our own day, and there was no reason to suppose that
the race had lost its old characteristics. According to my companion's
theory, Force had only its brief interval of domination anywhere; the
superior intelligence was sure to gain the upper hand at last; and
we, in our opposition to this law, were supply retarding an inevitable
tendency of nature--protracting the fulfilment of what we could not
prevent.

I got him back from these speculations to speak of himself, and he told
me some experiences which will, perhaps, account for the displeasure
with which he regards the changed fortunes of Spezia. I shall give
his narrative as nearly as I can in his own words, and in a chapter to
itself.

THE STRANGE MAN'S SORROW.

"When I first knew Spezia, it was a very charming spot to pass the
summer in. The English had not found it out A b