It never took me more than a minute to spell out the name of a street; the names were painted in Greek letters, and I remembered the shape of them.
When the Judge and I were hunting for a beer shop I was the Big Injun of the party. The Judge did not know any more about Greek, than a cow does about quadratic equations, and he was obliged to ask me to tell him the names of the streets. And the way I rattled off Hermes, Eolus, Minerva, Adrian, and the like, would have done credit to a deaf and dumb asylum. Didn’t I rejoice that I was familiar with Greek, and able to save the trouble of asking somebody to direct us to our destination?
The Judge appreciated the situation and said, “What a splendid thing it is to know something! If I should ever be a husband, and a father, and the results of my paternity should be boys, I would have them study Greek. They may come to Athens some time and find it convenient in going about the streets. A good map of the city would cost fifty cents, and they will be able to save all that expenditure.”
There were tears in his eyes as he spoke, for we were in front of the beer-shop and found it closed.
Happily there was another establishment for the sale of malt liquors, and as it was only two blocks away, I was able to get my friend where he could rest and be comfortable.
“Alas for the decline of Greece,” he muttered as he brought the glass to his lips, and drew a long breath with beer in it; “Once she had her Homer, her Demosthenes, her Lycurgus, her Epaminondas; on yonder hill St. Paul preached to the Athenians his famous discourse on the unknown God; here Socrates taught his philosophy; from Argos the mighty Agamemnon and his company of warriors sailed for the siege of Troy, and hung like a bull-dog to a coat-tail for ten long and weary years; here Sculpture became the study of a whole people, and Art reached the highest point of development known to ancient times; here were fought those battles between Greeks and Persians, that will live and ring through all history, and on yonder bay that shines so placidly in the afternoon sun, the fleet of Xerxes was destroyed.
“And what have we to-day?