There is an ineffable charm in the landscape, in the atmosphere, of Greece. No other land that I know possesses an exactly similar spell. Wildness and calm seem woven together, a warm and almost caressing wildness with a calm that is full of romance. There the wilderness is indeed a haven to long after, and there the solitudes call you as though with the voices of friends. As I turned at last to go away from Poseidon’s white marble ruin, a one-armed man came up to me, and in English told me that he was the guardian of the temple. “But where do you live?” I asked him, looking over the vast solitude. Smiling, he led the way down to a low whitewashed bungalow at a little distance. There, in a rough but delicious loggia, paved and fronting the sea, I found two brown women sitting with a baby among some small pots of flowers. Remote from the world, with only the marble columns for neighbors, with no voice but the sea’s to speak to them, dwell these four persons. The man lived and worked for many years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he lost his arm in some whirring machinery. Now he has come home and entered the sea-god’s service. Pittsburgh and the Hellenic wilderness--what a contrast! But my one-armed friend takes it philosophically. He shrugs his shoulder, points to his stump, and says, “I guess I couldn’t go on there like this, so I had to quit, and they put me here.” They put him “here,” on Cape Sunium, and on Cape Sunium he has built himself a house and made for himself a loggia, white, cool, brightened with flowers, face to face with the purple sea, and the isles and the mountains of Greece. And at Sunium he intends to remain because, unfortunately, having lost an arm, he is no longer wanted in Pittsburgh. I gave him some money, accepted the baby’s wavering but insistent hand, and left him to his good or ill fortune in the exquisite wilderness. (To be continued) [Illustration] THE TACHYPOMP[8] A MATHEMATICAL DEMONSTRATION (NOTEWORTHY STORIES OF THE LAST GENERATION) BY EDWARD P. MITCHELL WITH A PORTRAIT, AND NEW DRAWINGS BY REGINALD BIRCH There was nothing mysterious about Professor Surd’s dislike for me. I was the only poor mathematician in an exceptionally mathematical class. The old gentleman sought the lecture-room every morning with eagerness, and left reluctantly. For was it not a thing of joy to find seventy young men who, individually and collectively, preferred _x_ to XX; who had rather differentiate than dissipate; and for whom the limbs of the heavenly bodies had more attractions than those of earthly stars upon the spectacular stage?