The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy CruisePaine, Albert Bigelow
General
The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy Cruise
Paine, Albert Bigelow
Middle East -- Description and travel
I lost no time in getting on deck, but it seemed that everybody was
there ahead of me. They were strung along the rail, and each one had his
glass, or his neighbor's, and was pointing and discoursing and argufying
and having a beautiful time. The Diplomat was holding forth on the
similarity of modern and ancient Greek, and was threatening to use the
latter on the first victim that came within range. The Patriarch, who is
religious when he happens to think about it, was trying to find Mars
Hill, where St. Paul preached; the Credulous One was pointing out to
everybody Lykabettos Hill as Mt. Ararat (information obtained from the
Horse-Doctor), while the Apostle and the Colonel were quarrelling
fiercely over a subject which neither of them knew anything about--the
rise of Christianity in Greece.
I got into a row myself, presently, with one of the boys, just because I
happened to make some little classical allusion-- I have forgotten what
it was now, and I didn't seem to know much about it then, from what he
said. We were all stirred up with knowledge, brought face to face with
history, as we were, and bound to unload it on somebody. Only the
Music-Master wasn't. A little apart from any group, he stood clutching
the rail, his face shining with a light that was not all of the morning,
gazing in silence at his hill of dreams.
We went ashore in boats that had pretty Greek rugs in them, and took a
little train on which all the cars were smoking-cars (there are no other
kind in Greece), and we looked out the windows trying to imagine we were
really in Greece where once the gods dwelt; where Homer sang and
Achilles fought; where the first Argonauts set sail for the Golden
Fleece. I wish we could have met those voyagers before they started.
They wouldn't have needed to go then. They could have taken the Golden
Fleece off of this crowd if they had anything to sell in that Argosy of
theirs, and their descendants are going to do it yet. I know from the
conversation that is going on behind me. The Mill and a lot of her boon
companions are doing the talking, and it is not of the classic ruins we
are about to see, but of the lace they bought in Malta and Gibraltar,
and of the embroidery they are going to buy in Greece.
Our chariots were waiting at the station--carriages, I mean, nice modern
ones--and we were started in a minute, and suddenly there was the
Theseum, the best preserved of Greek ruins, I believe, right in front of
us, though we did not stop for it then. But it was startling--that old,
discolored temple standing there unenclosed, unprotected, unregarded in
the busy midst of modern surroundings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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