“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.