as a surprise to see him abroad at
such an hour. Nobody supposed he cared anything about an old fable like
that of Scylla and Charybdis. One of the boys said:

"Hello, doctor, what are you doing up here at this time of night?--What
do you want to see this place for?"

"What do I want to see this place for? Young man, little do you know me,
or you wouldn't ask such a question. I wish to see all the places that's
mentioned in the Bible."

"Stuff--this place isn't mentioned in the Bible."

"It ain't mentioned in the Bible!--this place ain't--well now, what place
is this, since you know so much about it?"

"Why it's Scylla and Charybdis."

"Scylla and Cha--confound it, I thought it was Sodom and Gomorrah!"

And he closed up his glass and went below. The above is the ship story.
Its plausibility is marred a little by the fact that the Oracle was not a
biblical student, and did not spend much of his time instructing himself
about Scriptural localities.--They say the Oracle complains, in this hot
weather, lately, that the only beverage in the ship that is passable, is
the butter. He did not mean butter, of course, but inasmuch as that
article remains in a melted state now since we are out of ice, it is fair
to give him the credit of getting one long word in the right place,
anyhow, for once in his life. He said, in Rome, that the Pope was a
noble-looking old man, but he never did think much of his Iliad.

We spent one pleasant day skirting along the Isles of Greece. They are
very mountainous. Their prevailing tints are gray and brown, approaching
to red. Little white villages surrounded by trees, nestle in the valleys
or roost upon the lofty perpendicular sea-walls.

We had one fine sunset--a rich carmine flush that suffused the western
sky and cast a ruddy glow far over the sea.--Fine sunsets seem to be
rare in this part of the world--or at least, striking ones. They are
soft, sensuous, lovely--they are exquisite refined, effeminate, but we
have seen no sunsets here yet like the gorgeous conflagrations that flame
in the track of the sinking sun in our high northern latitudes.

But what were sunsets to us, with the wild excitement upon us of
approaching the most renowned of cities! What cared we for outward
visions, when Agamemnon, Achilles, and a thousand other heroes of the
great Past were marching in ghostly procession through our fancies? What
were sunsets to us, who were about to live and breathe an