Hotel Timeo (named for Timæus, the great historian of the place) is a creature-comfortable house where the guests dress for dinner. Two fashionable American ladies sat at a table near ours, a family of Sicilians in deep mourning farther away. At a glance we saw that the guests were all men and women of the world. “Quite a contrast to the camp,” said Patsy, as the French waiter brought our consommé. “Don’t you miss Gasperone, the Africano, the carpenters sitting below the salt?” Early next morning nightingales and blackbirds called and called me to the window. I stepped on the balcony and saw Etna at dawn, clear against a pearl-gray sky. The mountain rises out of the sea to an enormous height; it is snow-covered at this season a third of the way down. In the crystal clearness of early morning the summit was unclouded; the smoke was blown from the cone like a gray feather. Two hours later Assunta, the Sicilian beauty, who brought the breakfast tray with honey, white bread and golden butter, threw wide the shutters. “The Signora will eat outside? It is the habit of the strangers.” * * * * * In the South spring comes with one stride, as night in the tropics. It was here. A jessamine clambered up from the garden, bringing its starry blossoms, its delicate perfume; a tall lemon tree in full blossom, a rose tree touched the balcony--I leaned down and picked a blush rose. Beyond was a feathery mimosa, covered with fine yellow flowers; splendid savage cactus plants raised their armed spikes like spears; a pergola was lost under an amethystine rain of wistaria, an arbor hidden by the harsh glory of bourganvillia; a row of amphoræ, that once held wine or oil, overflowed with purple heliotrope. On a wall stood a jewelled bird, the prince of peacocks, sunning himself, his long tail sweeping the path. Below lay the turquoise sea, the scalloped shore, the long point of Naxos, tawny sand, rimmed with white foam; in the lovely bay a fishing boat slipped before the wind. Beyond Naxos the sloping line of Etna begins, rising grandly from the blue sea; the flanks are covered with white villages, shining in the sun. Slowly, smoothly, the line mounts and mounts, broken here and there with little mounds. The color is smoky blue to the snow-line. Now the smoke, instead of blowing aside, hangs above the cone in two snowy rings. On the shore glisten the white houses of Giardini; close at hand is Taormina--the old city wall, the flame-shaped battlements of the Badia, the clock on the cathedral. The hum of bees as they delve in the flower-cups, rifling honey for their hive--honey that Assunta will in turn ravish for some stranger, fills the air; the ceaseless chirrup of the tree-toads makes a soft alto to the bees’ treble; the fragrance of the flowers floats up like incense, that delights yet does not stupefy; every sense is fed on beauty. Is not this the one perfect hour to which one might say “stay”?