Thither I went one bright day. But, as at Phalerum, I found a deserted paradise. The charming gardens and arbors were empty. The villas, Russian, Egyptian, Swiss, English, French, and even now and then Greek in style, were shuttered and closed. All in vain the waterfalls sang, all in vain the silver poplars and the yellow-green pines gave their shade. No one was there. I went at length to a restaurant to get something to eat. Its door was unlocked, and I entered a large, deserted room, with many tables, a piano, and a terrace. No one came. I called, knocked, stamped, and at length evoked a thin elderly lady in a gray shawl, who seemed alarmed at the sight of me, and in a frail voice begged to know what I wanted. When I told her, she said there was nothing to eat except what they were going to have themselves. The season was over. Eventually she brought me mastika and part of her own dinner to the terrace, which overlooked a luxuriant and deserted garden. And there I spent two happy, golden hours. I had sought the heart of fashion, and found the exquisite peace that comes to places when fashion has left them. Henceforth I shall always associate beautiful Kephisia with silence, flowers, and one thin old woman in a gray shawl.

THE TEMPLE OF POSEIDON AND ATHENE AT SUNIUM

PAINTED FOR THE CENTURY BY JULES GUÉRIN

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Greece, though sparsely inhabited, is in the main a very cheerful-looking country. The loneliness of much of it is not depressing, the bareness of much of it is not sad. I began to understand this on the day when I went to the plain of Marathon, which, fortunately, lies away from railroads. One must go there by carriage or motor or on horseback. The road is bad both for beasts and machinery, but it passes through country which is typical of Greece, and through which it would be foolish to go in haste. Go quietly to Marathon, spend two hours there, or more, and when you return in the evening to Athens you will have tasted a new joy. You will have lived for a little while in an exquisite pastoral—a pastoral through which, it is true, no pipes of Pan have fluted to you,—I heard little music in Greece,—but which has been full of that lightness, brightness, simplicity, and delicacy peculiar to Greece. The soil of the land is light, and, I believe, though Hellenes have told me that in this I am wrong, that the heart of the people is light. Certainly the heart of one traveler was as he made his way to Marathon along a white road thickly powdered with dust.

From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

THE PLAIN OF MARATHON