n we saw it. They do not know its date, nor the hand of the
sculptor who carved it, yet it needs no name to proclaim its beauty.

I have now seen Athens as I wanted to see it. I have seen it
consecutively. It was beautiful to begin with the Acropolis and to
take all day to examine just the frieze of the Parthenon. We had to
have written permission, which we received through the American
minister, to allow us to climb up on the scaffolding and get a near
view of it. But we did it, and we were close enough to touch it, to
lay our hands on it, and we waited hours for the sun to sink low
enough to creep between the giant beams and touch the metopes so that
we could photograph them. Of course, we could have bought photographs
of them, but it seemed more like possessing them to take them with our
own little cameras.

The central metope is the most beautiful and in the best state of
preservation of all this marvel from the hand of Phidias; yet the work
of destruction goes on, as only last year the head of the rider fell
and broke into a thousand pieces, so that only the horse, the figure,
and the electric splendor of his wind-blown garments floating out
behind him remain. There is so little of this frieze left that it
requires the full scope of the imagination, as one stands and looks at
it, to picture this triumphal procession of Pan-Athenians which every
four years formed at the Acropolis and wound majestically down through
the Sacred Way to the Temple of Mysteries to sacrifice to the goddess
in honor of Marathon and Salamis.

But we followed this road ourselves. We, too, took the Sacred Way. On
the loveliest day imaginable we drove along this smooth white road; we
saw the Bay of Salamis; we wound around the sweetheart curve of her
shore; the purple hills forming the cup which holds her translucent
waters are the background to this famous battle-ground; and beyond,
set on the brow of one of these hills like a diadem, is all that
remains of the Temple of Mysteries. Broken columns are there,
pedestals, fragments of proud arches, now shattered and trodden under
foot. Its majesty is that of a sleeping goddess, so still, so
tranquil, proud even, in its ruins; yet in such utter silence it lies.
In the cracks of the marble floors, in the crannies of the walls,
springing from beneath the broken statue, voiceless yet persistent,
grow scarlet poppies--the sleep flowers of the world, yielding to this
yellowing Temple of Mysteries th