"Despite the velvet flatteries and smiling treasons of diplomacy, the present government of Greece is, as every government should be, on its good behavior before the people. Wonderfully clever, enterprising, and liberal have the French people made the author of the 'Life of Julius Cæsar.' Wonderfully reformative did the radicals of 1848 make the Pope. And the Greek nation, taken in the large, may prove to have some common sense to impart to its symbolical head, of whom we can only hope that the 'something rotten in the state of Denmark' may not have been taken from it to corrupt the state of Greece." But it was not through one sense alone that I received in Athens the delight of a new enchantment. My ear drank in the music of the Greek tongue which I constantly heard spoken by those around me. My husband's Greek committee held their sessions in our hotel parlors, and I found that, by closely listening to their talk, I could make out a word here and there. Encouraged by this, I presently purchased a primer and devoted myself to the study of its contents. I had in earlier life made one or two futile attempts to master the language. Now that it became a living tongue to me, I determined to acquire it, and in some measure succeeded. From that time to the present I have never ceased the serious pursuit of what I then began almost in play. In spite of the fact that a price had been set upon his head by the Turkish authorities in Crete, Dr. Howe persisted in his determination to visit the island. His stay there was necessarily limited to a few hours, but what he was able to observe of the character and disposition of the inhabitants led him to anticipate a triumph for their cause. We returned to Boston in the autumn of the same year, and at once began to make arrangements for a fair by which we hoped to raise some money for the Cretans. A great part of the winter was devoted to this work, and in the early spring a beautiful bazaar was held at Boston Music Hall, where the post of president was assigned to me. I was supported by a very efficient committee of ladies and gentlemen, and it was in this work that I became well acquainted with Miss Abby W. May, whose invaluable method and energy had much to do with the success of the undertaking. The fair lasted one week, and our sales and entertainments realized something more than thirty thousand dollars. But alas! the emancipation of Crete was not yet to be.