I witnessed a very sad case on the island of Kimolos of a sailor who, in a storm, as he rounded the dreaded Cape Malea on his return home, had been struck, as they told me, by that mysterious ghost-demon the Τελώνια; he was kept in the village church all day, and had been in there all night, whilst his relatives were praying vehemently around him for the return of his shattered intellect. This τελώνια is a species of electricity, and appears during storms on the mastheads, which the Greek sailors personify as birds of evil omen, which settle on the masts with a view to destroy the ship and drown the sailors. They have words expressly for exorcising this phantom, and sometimes they try to drive it away by beating brass or shooting. In Italy this is called the fire of St. Elmo, and is evidently the same idea which in ancient times was connected with the Dioscouri. From these points it will be easily seen how much that is old lives to-day. In manners and customs and daily life the peasant Greeks reproduce even more that can be identified as ancient, but this is apart from my present subject.—_Macmillan’s Magazine._ OUTWITTED. A TALE OF THE ABRUZZI. I. It was a warm afternoon in April, and the sun was blazing hotly down upon the wooded heights of the Abruzzi and upon the marble cliff against which nestles the little village of Palenella. The blue-green aloes were unfurling their sharp-pointed leaves in the clefts and crannies of the rocks above, and every now and then the wild roses sent a pink shower fluttering down to the flat roofs below, where maize and wheat were spread out to dry in the sun. Lucia Ceprano was sitting at the door of her gray stone cottage this hot afternoon, busily engaged in peeling and splitting willow rods preparatory to mending a certain dilapidated old basket which lay on the ground beside her. The stony village street was silent, and not a creature was visible but herself, except, indeed, a few fowls which were promenading in the sun, and some little black pigs which lay sleeping with outstretched legs in sundry dusty hollows. The fact was, that the whole population of Palenella was gone to take part in a procession in the little town of Palene. Not a creature had stayed at home but Lucia Ceprano; and no one now was surprised at this or anything else she took it into her head to do, for the villagers had made up their minds that she was “cracked.” Lucia had refused the wealthiest young men in the district; Lucia owned property, yet she worked as hard as if she were poor; Lucia did not dance the tarantella, was not merry, would not have a lover, and never beat her mule, even when he was as obstinate as only a mule can be! Such was the indictment against her; and in an out-of-the-way village like Palenella, where every one was about five hundred years behind the outside world, any one of these eccentricities would have been quite enough to make people call her crazy.