Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 316 pages of information about Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1..

Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 316 pages of information about Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1..

His daughter wondered what caused his tone to be so tender that night; the next day his neighbors wondered that he visited a certain poor, struggling widow, and gave her the house her husband once owned; and in the months that have since passed, many a poor family has wondered what has turned their former oppressor into such a provident friend.

I only wonder that so old and selfish a man could have had so bright and heavenly a dream.

* * * * *

A SENSIBLE EPITAPH.

’Reader, pass on:  ne’er waste your time
On bad biography or bitter rhyme: 
For what I am, this cumbrous clay insures,
And what I was, is no affair of yours.’

THE PELOPONNESUS IN MARCH.

’Fair clime I where every season smiles.

* * * * *

There, mildly dimpling, Ocean’s check
Reflects the tints of many a peak
Caught by the laughing tides that lave
These Edens of the Eastern wave. 
And if, at times, a transient breeze
Break the blue crystal of the seas,
Or sweep one blossom from the trees,
How welcome is each gentle air
That wakes and wafts the odors there!’

It was with thoughts like these running in our heads, that we found ourselves, at about half-past four o’clock, on a dark, cloudy, windy morning, March fifteenth, 18—­, rolling slowly along the uneven road that leads from Athens to the Piraeus.  Our guide was Dhemetri, of course—­who ever heard of a guide that was not named Dhemetri?  An excellent guide he was, too, never missing his way, answering correctly all our questions to which he knew the answers, and fabricating answers to the rest as near the truth as his moderate knowledge of antiquity would permit; providing us sedulously with creature comforts, and besieging our hearts daily with delicious omelettes and endless strings of figs.  Arrived at the Piraeus, we were transferred, with beds, cooking apparatus, and baggage, to the Lloyd steamer, whose cloud of steam and smoke was seen dimly in the gray morning.  At a reasonable time after the hour advertised, we sailed into the open bay, passed near enough the island of AEgina to see the ruined temple on one of its hights—­almost to count its columns—­then coasted along the rugged shores of Argolis, which we eagerly studied with the aid of a map.  Here was the peninsula Methana, and half hiding it, the island Calauria, where Demosthenes put an end to his life, once the seat of a famous Amphictyony.  Then the bold promontory which shuts in the fertile valley of Troezer, then the territory of Hermione, stretching between the mountains and the sea.  We touched at Hydhra, famed in the history of the Greek Revolution, a strange, rambling town, picturesquely situated on a cleft in a bare island of gray rock, and shortly after at Spetzia, a town of much the same character; then toward night sailed into the beautiful bay of Napoli, or Nauplia, once the capital of Greece.

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Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.