CHAPTER XII

EGYPT. PALESTINE. GREECE.

Our great adventure lasted more than two years. I kept no diary, wrote few letters. My mother’s journal for these months is briefer than usual; we lived at such a pace that there was not time to record the experiences of each day. What I remember are the unforgettable things. Of Holland, the artists, Franz Hals and Rembrandt, the great organ at Haarlem, the sturdy peasants, the round red cheeses that resemble them. Belgium is clearer; besides the picture of Rubens and Van Dyck, I can see Bruges with its fine belfry, Ghent with the lace makers, the smiling countryside with straight white roads bordered by poplars. Of Normandy and Brittany, I remember the mystery of the Druid stones, those strange dolmens and menhirs, footsteps of a mighty race, the grave reserve of the Bretons and the peasant costumes that vary with every town. We soon learned to recognize them.

“That woman is from Quimperlé,” my mother would say, or, “That man wears the dress of St. Pol de Léon.”

Was it at one of these towns or somewhere in Holland that J. found the design for my mother’s cap?

In Brittany we traveled by carriage. One afternoon we stopped to gather some fine high-bush blackberries that grew by the roadside.

“What?” exclaimed the driver, who had a little French, “You eat those wild things? That is not well; they are only for birds and cattle.” He was much concerned for us, my mother was equally concerned for him. While I stood, as Emerson has it:

Caught among the blackberry vines, Feeding on the Ethiops sweet.

_she_ tried to persuade him that blackberries were good food for human beings to eat.

“This is such a poor country! What a pity they do not know the value of their own fruits!” she exclaimed.

After Brittany came Switzerland; of this there remains the awe of the Alps, the chill breath of the Jungfrau, the edelweiss at Chamonix, the bear-pit at Berne. These were surface things, easily recalled; when it comes to memory’s substratum, that’s a different story. My mind is like a vast rubbish heap that covers some buried city; if I dig hard enough I uncover priceless treasures, temples, statues, long colonnades leading to forgotten altars where once the sacred fire burned.

My friend Giacomo Boni, who found the tomb of Romulus in the Roman Forum, showed me his method of excavation. The dust of ages was carefully skimmed off in layers. As each stratum represented a different epoch, it was isolated and sifted, and every bit of marble, glass, metal, or brick sorted and fitted together. I have helped him sort his treasures in the little workroom over the Forum, watched his skillful, nervous fingers put together the fragments of an exquisite vase three thousand years old. By a like method I too can find bits of jeweled glass and earthenware: can piece them together; the trouble is in choosing where to dig!

Among the spoils of these months of wandering three objects survive, treasured by my mother through all the years; a tiny clay statuette of the goddess Pacht, ravished from an Egyptian tomb, a small Greek terra cotta cup, and some pressed flowers in an envelope marked “Gethsemane.” Out of that shining past that I alone remember, let me snatch something worth preserving of the three countries which these, her little keepsakes, recall,--Egypt, Greece, Palestine!

If you look at the map of Egypt you will see something like a lily with a long curving stem, lying at the edge of the Mediterranean. The graceful stem is the river Nile, the cup is the Nile Delta, the lotus of Isis and Osiris.

We landed at Alexandria, November 27, 1878, and left the next day for Cairo, where we stayed at Shepheard’s Hotel, then a primitive place, where the turbaned fellaheen servants were summoned by clapping the hands. As we sat on that famous terrace of Shepheard’s, looking out at the motley crowd surging by, two figures with flowing white sleeves, carrying light wands in their hands, ran side by side down the street, before a victoria drawn by a pair of Arab horses. The flying figures were the sais or running footmen, who go before the carriage of a notable to clear away the crowd. At their low cry, “_O Wai Yer Geddeh! O Wai Yer Geddeh!_” (“Out of the way, you clever fellow!”) the water carriers, snake charmers, donkey boys, and camel drivers made way for the carriage to draw up before the hotel.

“That,” said Sir George Elliott, a new acquaintance, “is Stone Pasha, Chief of Staff to the Khedive. He has come to call on some one.”

He had come to call on us. Our cousin, Julia McAllister, who was traveling with us, was an old friend; to her we owed the good offices of this powerful friend at court. Stone Pasha was a handsome man with white hair and mustache and strong regular features. In spite of his Egyptian uniform and fez, he bore the stamp of West Point, and looked the typical Civil War general he was. Our first meeting with Stone Pasha was full of interest. Though he was most solicitous that we should receive every attention, he was preoccupied and wore a harried look. How should he not?

The curtain had rung up on the last act in the drama of Ismaïl Pasha’s life as Khedive of Egypt. The four million pounds England had paid for his interest in the Suez Canal were already spent, and Mr. Rivers Wilson was in Cairo looking after British interests. Stone Pasha must have known that the final catastrophe was near at hand, but he played the game to the end.

He introduced to us several other Americans in the Khedive’s service, General Loring who had lost an arm in the Civil War, Purdy Bey, and Inman Barnard, whom I remembered in Boston. We had crossed on the steamer with Consul General Farman; thanks to these friends we met many interesting people, among others Sir Samuel and Lady Baker, with whom my mother talked endlessly. In speaking of her native Egyptian servant, Lady Baker said:

“I assure you he is the best human being I have ever known.”

The Bakers were very friendly; I remember Lady Baker showing me a remarkable necklace of lions’ claws she wore. Mr. and Mrs. Rivers Wilson, though we had some talk with both, were reserved and extremely formal. A reception at Mr. Goschen’s house was one of the few private festivities I recall. It may have been here that we met Mariette Bey, the French Egyptologist, under whose guidance we made our first visit to the Bulak Museum, of which he was founder and moving spirit.

Robert Irwin of Japan and his sister Maisie, who were at Shepheard’s, added much to the pleasure of our stay. We made many excursions together, among others the ascent of the great pyramid. To each of our party the Sheikh of the desert Bedouins allotted two Arabs. My men, Hassan and Osman, two superb bronze figures, each gripped me by an arm and practically swung me up from tier to tier of the huge blocks. One of our party seemed bent on making record time; he made no pause, and seemed to fly up those awful steps. When the rest of us reached the top this friend lay gasping flat on his back.

“Those Bedouins tried to kill me,” he murmured; “I kept calling ‘_yaller!_’ ‘_yaller!_’ and the more I ‘yallered’ the faster they ran.”

“You used the wrong word; you should have said ‘_shwaiyer!_’ ‘_Yaller_’ means faster!” Mahomet, the dragoman, explained.

We lunched luxuriously on the summit of the great pyramid, on roast quail, fresh rolls, and _pâté de foie gras_! The wilted one was restored with iced champagne.

“Do not let us hurry down,” said the eldest of the party. “I, for one, shall never again get to the top of Cheops.”

So we lingered, watching the changing color of the Mokatten hills, the yellow sands of the desert, the immutable face of the Sphinx till the sky blazed with Egypt’s sublime sunset.

We came again to the Sphinx by starlight. Out there in the desert the constellations seemed nearer than ever before; Venus hung low, as if suspended by a thread from the heavens, her reflection in the Nile a full golden orb. Last and best of all we came on the night of the full moon to take farewell, and each of us tried to guess the ancient riddle.

The Sphinx is drowsy, Her wings are furled: Her ear is heavy, She broods on the world. Who’ll tell me my secret, The ages have kept?

One morning, “dressed in our best”, we three, my mother, my cousin, and I, drove in Stone Pasha’s carriage behind those flying _sais_ to Abdin Palace, where the General had arranged an audience with the three Princesses, the Khedive’s royal wives. Outside the entrance was a guard of black eunuchs, dreadful creatures with animal faces, dull-eyed, and gross. Inside, the lofty entrance hall was ablaze with color. We were welcomed by a group of rainbow-clad girls.

“_Naharak said!_” they exclaimed, “May thy day be happy!”

“_Naharak leben!_” we answered, “May thy day be as white as milk!”

“Accept whatever is offered; to refuse is an insult.” This had been Mahomet’s last advice, as he left us to fend for ourselves in the harem of the Khedive.

A slender brown girl with almond eyes and henna-tipped fingers handed me a jeweled cup.

“_Taffadali_,” she said, “I beg you to take.”

I tasted the delicious sherbet and was about to drain the cup when my odalisque hastily took it from me and handed it to my cousin; it was meant for all of us!

“May it agree with you!” said the girl, raising her hand to her head. Having forgotten the proper response, I answered at random with that useful word, “_Bismillah_.”

I was thankful for my few phrases of Arabic; they made the women laugh and set us all at ease!

The girls examined our dresses and hats with childlike curiosity. They asked about our husbands. When told we were unmarried, they were scandalized. An embossed silver bowl filled with scented water was now presented; we dipped our fingers and dried them on linen towels embroidered in gold, fragrant with attar of roses, then they led us into another room for our audience.

Here was a strange medley of East and West! The eldest Princess in native costume of white satin, richly embroidered, sat on a low divan; there were chairs for the rest of us. The second Princess wore, wrong side before, a European frock meant to be fastened up the back. The youngest Princess, the “favorite”, was dressed like a Parisian, in blue silk, with many diamonds. She spoke a little French and acted as interpreter.

When we were seated, chibouks were handed us. Julia McAllister and I, who had rehearsed this part, managed our long pipes tolerably well; my mother made dreadful work of hers, coughing horribly, and blowing into her chibouk till she put it out. The elder Princess clapped her hands for a slave to relight it with a perfumed coal held in a pair of silver tongs.

“Do not trouble yourself to smoke, madam,” said the favorite. “It is evident you have not the habit.”

They were interested in our travels and asked endless questions about the places we had seen.

“What is the matter with those young women that at their age they are unmarried?” the first Princess asked my mother.

The explanation that we had not yet met our fates did not seem to satisfy her.

“Do you enjoy traveling?” one of us asked after a long pause.

“We should enjoy it,” the first Princess sighed, “but the custom of our country forbids us!”

As conversation was not easy, my mother cut the visit rather short, according to oriental ideas. We learned later from Mahomet that we had not made a bad impression, but that we had been expected to stay much longer.

Shortly after we received an invitation for the Khedive’s ball at the Abdin Palace; full dress was _de rigueur_. Before leaving Paris there had been a discussion as to what clothes we should take for our journey to the East. I recalled Aunt Louisa’s advice:

“Never go anywhere without a ball dress!”

I made room in my modest trunk for my best ball dress, though I was a good deal laughed at for my pains. When I stepped into Stone Pasha’s carriage and drove to that fairy ball at the Abdin Palace, dressed in the latest Parisian fashion, the laugh was on the other side!

We were presented to the Khedive and his son, Tewfik Pasha; both wore European dress with a large star on the breast and the inevitable fez. The Khedive made a deep bow and then turned to address my mother, to whom he made quite a speech, leaving me to talk with Tewfik. The Khedive was about fifty, rather stout, with grizzled hair and beard, a pleasant smile, and a magnetic presence. Tewfik was not half so attractive as his father; he had the smoldering eye and scornful gaze of the fanatical Mohammedan. He spoke of his new steam yacht lately arrived in Cairo and asked if we were going up the Nile.

“And where are the ladies we saw when we were last at the palace?” I asked indiscreetly enough. Tewfik glanced indifferently at a sort of trellised balcony at the end of the room, as he answered:

“It is not the custom of our country for our ladies to appear at a ball.”

I seemed to feel the eyes of those women of the harem looking down upon me from behind those screens.

No man of his time was more talked about than Ismaïl Pasha. Some people said of him, “He has ruined Egypt.” Others maintained, “He has created a new Egypt.”

Whatever place history may award him, these things remain to his credit. He completed the Suez Canal. He built the road from Cairo to the Pyramids. He protected the exploration of Sir Samuel Baker. He founded girls’ schools all over Egypt; and he commissioned Giuseppe Verdi to write “Aïda” for the opening of the Cairo Opera House. When I hear Caruso’s voice in “Celeste Aïda”, I remember Ismaïl Pasha, for whom Verdi’s masterpiece was written!

My mother’s journal notes that “Maud danced all night.” We did not get home much before four in the morning. One partner, the son of a prominent German banker, is recalled by a photograph of a handsome oriental looking man, that has somehow survived. It bears the inscription:

“Never forgetting the delicious hours I have spent in your company charming. Hans Bleichroder. Cairo, December 12, 1878.”

Among the Orientals, I should say, my cousin Julia was the admired one of our little party. Her tall, dignified figure and tendency to _embonpoint_ filled them with delight.

Another of my partners, my old friend, Augustus Gurnee, writes me _à propos_ of this ball of forty years ago:

“Indeed I was with you, and danced with you at the last ball Ismaïl gave before he was deposed; and while we were circling, an awkward Levantine couple caromed into us, so that my heel came down on the foot of Tewfik, who was standing in a doorway. We stopped to crave pardon, and he was smiling and courteous, so I never knew whether he felt any pain. _Inshallah!_”

The company at the ball was of many nationalities,--French, English, and German officers, the Americans of the Khedive’s staff, and representatives of all the powers, great and small. The diplomats and army officers knew the dreadful confusion of Ismaïl’s affairs. Though all were guarded in their talk, one felt that Cairo society was an armed camp, where France and England were engaged in a silent duel for the control of the Suez Canal, Germany was “out for trade”, and only the American Condottieri were for the Khedive!

The catastrophe came a few months later, when Ismaïl Pasha was deposed and left Alexandria for Naples with his harem, his suite, and his two sons, Hussein and Hassan, on the yacht _Mahroussahl_, leaving his uneasy throne to my friend Tewfik Pasha. When she read of this my mother exclaimed:

“Our friends the Princesses of the Abdin Palace have their wish at last; they are now traveling to a new country!”

In Egypt my mother seemed much of the time to be living a life quite apart from the sight-seeing and adventuring we shared. At the first glimpse of the river Nile she seemed to enter a world where I could not follow her. Moses, Joseph, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, all the figures in Bible history with whom she had been familiar since earliest childhood, stole between us like impalpable shadows, claiming her for their own. In Palestine this absorption increased. If all the rest of our long wandering was planned for my profit and pleasure, the trip to the Holy Land was for herself the realization of a life’s dream. For the only time in her life, so far as I know, she borrowed money to make what was then a very expensive journey.

“Those are the mountains of Judea,” a returning missionary pointed out, as we neared the coast. Soon the faint blue line grew stronger, we could make out the yellow beach, olive groves, palm trees, and the flags of many nationalities floating from the different consulates. We landed at Jaffa, not an easy matter, as the steamer anchored half a mile from shore, and we were compelled to clamber down to a small boat tossing like a cockleshell on the rough sea.

We traveled chiefly on horseback, over precipitous mountain trails, through the desert where we were told there was danger from the wild tribesmen. My mother was obliged to pay a large sum for an escort of Turkish soldiers to protect us from these wandering Bedouins. She made her arrangements so well that while we were camping in the desert near Jericho, Eugene Thayer, a rich young Bostonian, asked to join our party, his own men having proved untrustworthy.

My cousin Julia was so much admired by one of the Bedouin chiefs that we were advised not to linger in that locality lest he should attempt to carry her off. Another American girl we met in Egypt was sought for an exclusive harem.

“She is fairer than any Circassian!” her mother was told. After refusing a large sum of money, this lady was urged to set her own price upon her daughter.

By the river Jordan, on the banks of the Dead Sea, on the Plains of Boaz, wherever we went, my mother was preoccupied and withdrawn. She seemed to be living over the earthly life of her Master and those who had known and walked with him in these places.

“Christ has been here!” she murmured to herself over and over again, and seemed to think of little else.

One of the pictures of Jerusalem that rises before me is of the Via Dolorosa, where a poor madman walked each day, dressed in white, crowned with thorns, carrying a heavy wooden cross. She had some talk with this man, who had been a sailor. His story was strange and disjointed. He spoke of a terrible storm at sea when he was at the vessel’s helm. He was smitten by the sword of the Lord that came out of the sky and leveled him to the deck. After that his life work was clear; he must walk the holy streets of Jerusalem, for “Where the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”

We went to a church service in the little town of Bethlehem. Here my mother made friends with a well-known archeologist whose name I have forgotten, who told her he believed this to be the place where Jesus was born. He said that the inn where Mary and Joseph rested was the khan of the town, which in the natural order would remain unchanged for centuries. He saw no reason for doubting that when the Empress Helena came out to Palestine to find and preserve the holy places, this khan was exactly as it had been at the time of the nativity.

My mother was distressed to find a guard of Mohammedan soldiers at the Holy Sepulchre.

“These Moslems are here to keep you Christians from killing each other!” an acquaintance said to her rather brutally. “Riots are frequent, especially at Easter, when the church is crowded with pilgrims of every nationality.”

On the afternoon when we visited the Garden of Gethsemane, she was more silent than usual.

“Would you mind if I sang a hymn?” She raised her sweet voice and sang the hymn beginning:

Go to dark Gethsemane.

We lingered under the garden’s immemorial olives and cedars. The Franciscan who was our guide gave her a handful of flowers,--the flowers I found the other day in the envelope marked “Gethsemane.”

From Jaffa we sailed for Beirut, skirting the storied African coast. A fellow passenger, an old sea captain, electrified us one morning by exclaiming, as carelessly as he might have said, “Yonder’s Nantucket Light”, “Tyre’s thereabouts--place where the purple dye came from--not much to see there now!”

Of Cyprus, I remember only the thrill of the great names,--Paphos, birthplace and shrine of Aphrodite, and Salamis.

The steamer made some stay at Smyrna, where we were entertained by Christy Evangelides, who could not do enough for my mother. As a boy he had escaped from a Turkish massacre and been carried to New York on an American vessel. Here my grandfather Ward had befriended him.

Christy was a vigorous intelligent man who seemed to hold a leading position in Smyrna. While calling at his house we were offered a delicious sweetmeat flavored with rose leaves, served in a crystal dish. You took a spoonful; then a glass of water was handed you. If that ambrosial conserve had a fault, it was a little oversweet; this made the water doubly welcome. In speaking of Smyrna’s claim to fame Christy said, “You doubtless know that this island was the birthplace of Homer?”

I thought of the old English round we used to sing:

Seven great towns of Greece, ’tis said, Claimed Homer’s birth when he was dead, Through which, alive, he begged his bread.

At Jerusalem the grave of Adam had been pointed out to us; after that nothing surprised me. My mother however confirmed Christy’s statement.

Some of the saloon passengers were interested in a forlorn family in the steerage. The mother, an Egyptian, was very ill, and the children needed looking after. An Englishwoman who had lived long in Cairo gave this warning:

“Do not notice that fine baby too much! If you were a native, you would say to the mother, ‘What a poor, miserable little girl you have there!’”

“But why, when it is a boy, and the best of the lot?” was asked. The Englishwoman smiled and shook her head.

“I can’t explain--you couldn’t understand--it is not well to praise a child to these people; it brings bad luck.”

I understood! This was “the evil thing come out of Africa”, magic and fear of magic. In Hayti they call it _voodoo_, in Italy, _jettatura_!

As we neared the Dardanelles the old captain gave us another sensation. Pointing a blunt forefinger towards the faint blue coast, he said, “Troy once stood there!”

“Then Helen passed this way with Paris, Agamemnon, Achilles, and all the rest of them?” The captain nodded.

“So they say. There’s a deal more important happened since, though. My father fought the bloody Algerine pirates in these waters before I was born.--The Mediterranean wa’n’t exactly a tourist resort in those days!”

We made quite a stay at Constantinople. Much of what we did and saw on this wonder journey is lost to me now, but I have never lost the sympathy for the poetry and art of the Orient. “I heard the East a callin’”--it calls me yet!

While in Syria we had some disagreeable encounters with Turkish officialdom and formed a poor opinion of it. At the Constantinople customhouse the officers were incredibly insolent. One snatched a bouquet from my hand and threw it into the sea; another took from my ulster pocket a photograph of a Greek officer. The photograph was handed from one to another amid jeers and laughter.

We spent a delightful week at Constantinople as the guests of Captain--now Admiral--and Mrs. Frank Higginson. Captain Higginson’s ship was in the port and we met many of his officers, among others, Lieutenant John Jacob Hunker. These good friends arranged endless frolics and sight-seeing expeditions for us. Aside from our pleasure of being with such hospitable compatriots, Constantinople did not please me. I did not like the Turks or their capital. After the beautiful bronze and ebony people of upper and lower Egypt, the Turks looked a pale, ugly, washed-out race. I sighed for Hassan, our Bisharin guide at Assuan, with a patina of richest chocolate; for Abbas, our Theban donkey boy, whose color was like new-cast golden bronze. Hassan, who was twelve years old, was offered to us by his father as a gift, it being forbidden for a man to sell his son!

At that time Constantinople was infested by bands of mongrel scavenger dogs. They were so thick in the street outside my window that they looked like a moving yellow carpet. I have been told that shortly after this these poor creatures became such a nuisance that the authorities loaded them upon scows and transported them to a barren rocky islet where there was literally nothing to support life and where the stronger devoured the weaker, the survivors finally perishing from lack of food. I have been familiar with stories of Turkish atrocities all my life, but this has always lingered in my mind as one of the foulest.

It was at Constantinople that I discovered the secret of the mummy. My mother, who always had a catholic taste in curios, had bought, “unbeknownst” to me, a child mummy while we were at Luxor on the Nile. Thinking I might not like the purchase, she had concealed it from me by making each of her friends on the Nile steamer keep it for one night in their staterooms. My cousin, Julia McAllister, writes me _à propos_ of this incident:

“That was a delicious story. At Cyprus she bought two bottles of a very rare wine for Uncle Sam. These were packed in the valise with the mummy. One bottle broke; this did not improve the mummy, which was not in a case, and by the time we reached Constantinople, no one would go near the valise! In Athens we persuaded her to ship the mummy home by sailing vessel.”

Why did my mother want that mummy? Perhaps, like Théophile Gautier, she might have written a romance about it, had we not with youth’s cruelty ridiculed it! To my knowledge she made no use of that queer little bundle swathed in its ancient yellowed linen bands that lay for years in a trunk in our attic! She thought my sister Laura, mother of many children, might like it; but Laura refused the gift.

We reached Greece in the violet season, arriving at the Piraeus on the afternoon of a day in early spring. The drive to Athens remains an imperishable memory. We stopped at a half-way house to rest the horses and refresh ourselves with “_loukoumia_” and “_resinata_.” Here I picked my first Grecian violets. I remember that Mt. Hymettus was draped in a deep hyacinthine veil that looked solid enough to touch.

My mother’s friend, Mr. Kalopothakis, came down from Athens to greet us on board our steamer. During our three weeks’ stay in Athens he and my mother’s other friends were tireless in their kindness and hospitality.

“You will find that you are no stranger here,” Mr. Kalopothakis told me. “Your father’s daughter should feel at home in any Greek home. We have long memories. The name of Howe, the American Hero of the Greek Revolution, is known to every schoolboy.”

I remember two balls at the palace, when Queen Olga was very gracious, and King George danced with me. He waltzed extremely well, and was much interested in the dancing of the “Boston” by the Americans of our party, among whom were the Higginsons, who had come with us from Constantinople, and some of the officers from his ship that lay at the Piraeus.

Of the many entertainments given in our honor, the banquet with the Cretan chieftains was the most interesting. I lost it on account of illness, but my mother has described the meeting with the veterans and their expressions of gratitude to my father for his lifelong devotion to the cause of Cretan liberty. The banquet had a certain Homeric flavor. It was served in the open air on the seacoast. The _pièce de résistance_ was a lamb roasted out of doors with fragrant herbs wrapped about it.

“To Howe.” Each chieftain rose and offered the toast, pronouncing the name as if it were Greek. One old fellow whom I afterwards met had served with my father when he was a boy. He was past eighty and strong as an ox. I remember his very words:

“It is my wish and I believe that it will be granted, to live long enough to fight another campaign and to kill a few more Turks with these hands!” This with a gesture as of choking an enemy.

We found Doctor and Mrs. Schliemann in Athens, and enjoyed much foregathering with them. One afternoon, when we had gone to take tea with Mrs. Schliemann, she brought in the baby to be admired. He was a fine handsome child, with something of a temper. My mother took him up and tried to coax him, “What’s wrong with poor little Agamemnon,” she asked, as the boy, refusing to be comforted, only roared and raged in her arms. Mrs. Schliemann turned upon him sternly:

“No, not _poor_ little Agamemnon, _nasty_ little Agamemnon!” she exclaimed, and bore him away to the nursery in disgrace.

Mrs. Schliemann went with us to the Museum and showed us the treasures from the royal tombs and the Treasure House of Mycenae which she had helped her husband to excavate and explore. These excavations of the Acropolis at Mycenae had thrilled the civilized world. Doctor Schliemann did not hesitate to proclaim that he had found the sepulcher of Atreus, of the “king of men”, Agamemnon, of his charioteer, and of Cassandra and their companions. Mrs. Schliemann, who was a Greek, knew her Homer by heart, so that when her husband wished to refer to some passage in the “Iliad”, he merely turned to her, instead of carrying a volume of Homer in his pocket.

My mother took every opportunity of talking with these interesting people about their work and their amazing discoveries. She parted with Mrs. Schliemann with real regret. At their last interview the famous woman archeologist, the pioneer of her sex, put into my mother’s hands a very small terra cotta cup, with the words:

“You will keep this, because it comes from the tomb of Agamemnon.”

As I write there lies beside me on my desk an album purchased in Athens. On the flyleaf is written in my mother’s hand:

By Schliemann found, Troy’s treasures shine, While we explore a deeper mine, And crown the beauty of the Present With fellowship sincere and pleasant.

Then in varying handwriting follow the signatures of the actors and the parts they played in that three weeks’ comedy at Athens.

Minerva--Julia Ward Howe. Juno--Julia G. McAllister. Venus--Maud Howe. Diana--Grace H. Higginson. Neptune--F. J. Higginson, Commander U. S. Navy. Mercury--Jacob J. Hunker, U. S. Navy.

A large photograph of the Erechtheum has survived with the above-named personages standing or sitting upon the steps of that sublime temple, second in glory only to the Parthenon, near which it stands upon the Acropolis of Athens.

There was much of fun, frolic, and laughter in those days of wandering. Minerva knew how to make what was really a time of intense mental activity seem nothing but play. Froebel was outclassed, and her traveling kindergarten afforded an opportunity for education I have never known equaled.