o much fatigued
to be able to come to meet us. We soon joined him at the Hotel des
Etrangers, and inquired eagerly regarding the accident which had
befallen him. He had started in a small steamer lent him by the
government, intending to visit one of the islands on which were
congregated a number of Cretan refugees, mostly women and children. The
steamer had proceeded some way on its course when the machinery gave
out, leaving them at the mercy of the waves. They were without
provisions, and were in danger of drifting out to sea, with no power of
controlling the course of the vessel. After many hours of anxious
uncertainty, a favorable breeze sprang up, and Dr. Howe tore down the
canvas canopy which had shielded the deck from the sun. This he managed
to spread for a sail, and by this the vessel was in time brought within
reach of the shore. A telegram summoned help from Athens, and the party
reached the city an hour or so before our arrival.

I here insert some passages from a book of travels, in which I recorded
the impressions of this first visit to Greece. The work was published
soon after my return to Boston, and was named "From the Oak to the
Olive."

"Here is the Temple of Victory; within are the bas-reliefs of the
Victories arriving in the hurry of their glorious errands. Something so
they tumbled in upon us when Sherman conquered the Carolinas, and
Sheridan the valley of the Shenandoah, when Lee surrendered, and the
glad President went to Richmond. One of these Victories is untying her
sandal, in token of her permanent abiding. Yet all of them have trooped
away long since, scared by the hideous havoc of barbarians. And the
bas-reliefs, their marble shadows, have all been battered and mutilated
into the saddest mockery of their original tradition. The statue of
Wingless Victory that stood in the little temple has long been absent.
But the only Victory that the Parthenon now can seize or desire is this
very Wingless Victory, the triumph of a power that retreats not--the
power of Truth....

"Poor Greece, plundered by Roman, Christian, and Mussulman! Hers were
the lovely statues that grace the halls of the Vatican--at least, the
loveliest of them. And Rome shows to this day two colossal groups, of
which one bears the inscription, 'Opus Praxitelae,' the other that of
'Opus Phidiae.' And Naples has a Greek treasure or two, one thinks,
besides her wealth of sculptural gems, of which the best are of Greek
workmanship