It was with real pain that we left Greece.  I would like to go back to-morrow.  But there were reasons for reaching Italy without further delay, and we hurried through Corfu with only a day there to see its loveliness, instead of a week, as we would have liked.  The Empress of Austria’s villa lies tucked up on a hill-side, in a mass of orange, lemon, cypress, and magnolia trees.  Such an enchanting picture as it presents, and such wonderful beauty as it encloses.  But all that is modern.  What fascinates me in Corfu is that opposite the entrance to the old Hyllaean harbor lies the isle of Pontikonisi (Mouse Island), with a small chapel and clergy-house.  Tradition says that it is the Phaeacian ship which brought Ulysses to Ithaka, and which was afterwards turned into stone by the angry Poseidon (Neptune).  The brook Kressida at the point where it enters the lake is also pointed out as the spot where Ulysses was cast ashore and met the Princess Nausicaa.  A seasick sort of name, that!

I feel an inexplicable delight in letting my imagination run riot in the Greek traditions of their gods and goddesses.  Their heroes are more real to me than Caesar and Xerxes and Alexander.  And Hermes and Venus and the dwellers of Olympus have been such intimate friends since my childhood that the scenes of their exploits are of much more moment to me than Waterloo and Austerlitz.  I cannot forbear laughing at myself, however, for my holy rage over Greek mythology, as founded upon no better ground than that upon which Mark Twain apologized for his admiration for Fenimore Cooper’s Indians, for he admitted that they were a defunct race of beings which never had existed!

We arrived at Brindisi at four o’clock in the morning.  Brindisi at four o’clock in the morning is not pleasant, nor would any other city be on the face of this green footstool.  We were in quarantine, and we had to cope with a cross stewardess, who declared that we demanded too much service, and that she would not bring us our coffee in bed, and who then went and did it like an angel, so that we patted her on the back and told her in French that she was “well amiable,” although at that hour in the morning we would have preferred to throttle her for her impertinence, and then to throw her in the Adriatic Sea as a neat little finish.  Such, however, is our diplomatic course of travel.

We walked in line under the doctor’s eye, and he pronounced us sanitary and permitted us to land.  We were four hours late, but we scalded ourselves with a second cup of coffee and tried for the six-o’clock train for Naples, missed it, sent a telegram to Cook to send our letters to the train to meet us, and then went back to the ship to endure with patience and commendable fortitude the jeers of our fellow-passengers.  Virtue was its own reward, however, for soon, under the rays of the rising sun, which we did not get up to see, and did not want to see, there steamed into the harbor alongside of us the P. & O. ship Sutly,