THE HISTORICAL PART OF ATHENS, GREECE.
PANORAMA OF THE GREAT RUINED GROUPS
The Cork is one of the marine giants, and when all the first-cabin rooms were sold the company painted up the second-cabin quarters and sold them at full first-class rates. I joined the party only a few days before it started and was glad to get an outside, single room, about the size and shape of a Pullman section. Its distinction was that it had a port-hole of its own through which I could freely admit the local climate. When I first surveyed the contracted proportions of this stateroom, the paucity of its fittings and entire lack of the usual accommodations, I was filled as full of acute melancholia as an egg is of meat and had I not paid the passage money I would have bolted from the Cork out into utter darkness; but I was "in for it," and determined to make the best of the situation; so I got some clothes lines and screw hooks, and with them constructed a labyrinth of handy landing nets for all my belongings, which resembled the telegraph wires on Tenth Avenue before Mayor Grant cut them down. I also hung my top coat and mackintosh in convenient places, and used their pockets for storage vaults. One pocket served as a complete medicine chest, another accommodated slippers, collars, cuffs and shaving tackle, while I utilized the sleeve openings (closed at the cuffs with safety pins), to hold a full line of clothes, hair and tooth brushes, and tied small things to the buttons, which shook with the vibration of the ship as sleigh-bells are shaken by the vaudeville artist when he plays Comin' Through the Rye on them for an encore. The whole arrangement was a marvelous and instantaneous success, and so proud was I of the achievement that I invited my neighbors to peep into the stateroom to see its glories and utilities. Some of them proceeded at once to copy my best ideas—but that is the fate of all inventors. However, they were grateful, for they named the passageway on which eight rooms opened, "Harp Alley," in honor of my nationality, and placed a card with this legend on it at the entrance:
HARP ALLEY
NIGHT & DAY HOUSE
On the South Corner
With a Port-Hole on the Side
Hot Meals
and
Other Entertainments
at all hours
"WE NEVER SLEEP"
The rush of arrivals was so great that I was soon obliged to remove the sign and "close the house."
But a great catastrophe was shortly to happen which cast a gloom over the Alley and plunged us into a miniature Republic disaster. A big salt water pipe was hung from the ceiling of the Alley passage; and what do you think! under strong pressure it burst with a loud noise one morning when we were dressing for breakfast and flooded the rooms of the entire colony before we could say "Jack Robinson!" Such a scurrying into bath robes and jumping out of staterooms were never seen! I felt that owing to my high standing and responsible position in the "Alley," and having in mind the fame of Binns (of the Republic, the "wireless" hero of Nantucket shoals), it was incumbent on me to ignore my personal effects and comfort in an attempt to save the ladies and their lingerie at any price. So I slipped on my trusty rain coat, and handed them out under a spread umbrella, one by one, to a place of safety, I being the very last man to leave the Alley and even then with reluctance. But mind you, I never took my eyes off the floor! they were glued to it all the while this transfer was being made. (Although when I afterward mentioned this circumstance, some lady slung the javelin into me from ambush by saying sarcastically—"Oh, yes indeed! 'glued to the floor' the way the average man's eyes are riveted to the sidewalk when he passes the Flatiron Building on a windy day!") But I was determined to make it a wholesale sacrifice, and I did it! This Spartan performance was generously rewarded, for I was added instanter to the Cork's "Hall of Fame" as the "Hero of the Deluge."
All our things were taken down to the furnace room and dried in a short time, and the Alley quickly regained its dignity and composure. I had to repair the damages to my room, but soon got it in perfect running order again; with added improvements it became a veritable Bohemian dream and I would not have left it for worlds. I could lie on my bed and get a drink of water without rising, reach for a cigar, sew on a missing button, open my treasury vaults to see how the funds were holding out, and when dressing could sit down on my only seat, a ten-cent camp stool, and take a short smoke while Steward Griffiths was filling my bath tub. But I was far from civilization, as the first-cabin baths were up two deck flights, then down one and back through a passage underneath where you started from; the round trip was a ten minutes' walk. I consoled myself with the reflection that it was needed exercise and in the best interests of hygiene.
The delights of Funchal exhausted, we were off again for a visit to