the air to
teach him to keep his distance. It is difficult, probably, for people
from the New World to look upon a forest as something sacred, guarded,
private; we have taken our pleasure "in the woods" all our lives
whenever we have felt so inclined; we do not intend to do any harm
there, but we do wish to be free. In the olive groves of Corfu the wish
can be gratified. Their aisles are wonderful in every respect: in the
size of the trees (some of them are sixty feet high), in the
picturesque shapes of the gnarled trunks, in the extent of the long
vistas where the light has the color which some of us know at home--that
silvery green under the great live-oaks at the South, when their
branches are veiled in the long moss.

[Illustration: "MON REPOS," SUMMER RESIDENCE OF THE KING OF GREECE]

[Illustration: IN THE GROUNDS OF THE NEW VILLA OF THE EMPRESS OF GREECE]

But Athens was before us; we must leave the groves; we must leave
Nausicaa's shore. We did so at last in the wake of a departing storm.
For several days the wind had been tempestuous. The signal, which is
displayed from the Citadel, had become a riddle; it is an arrangement of
flags by day and of lanterns by night, and no two of us ever deciphered
it alike. If the order was thus and so, it meant that something
belonging to the Austrian-Lloyd company was in sight; if so and thus, it
meant the Florio line; if neither of these, then it might possibly be
our boat--that is, the Greek coasting steamer which we had decided to
take because we had been told that it was the best. I have never
fathomed the mystery as to why our informant told us this. If he had
been a Greek, it would have been at least a patriotic misrepresentation.
We were dismayed when we reached the rough tub. But, after all, in one
sense she was the best, for she dawdled in and out among the islands,
never in the least hurry, and stopping to gossip with them all; this
gave us a good chance to see them, if it gave us nothing else. I have
said "when we reached her," for there were several false starts. We rose
in the morning in a mood of regretful good-bye, expecting to be far away
at night. And at night, with our good-bye on our hands, we were still in
our hotel. But it is only fair to add that with its garlands of flowers
and myrtle for the Christmas season; with its queer assemblage of
Levantines in the dining-room; with its bath-room in the depths of the
earth, to which one descended by stairway l