Just as the train for Syracuse was coming in we reached Lentini station, and this time the sea that "washes away all human ills" was not available. We here made a resolve to do our work in the future when the sun was nearer the horizon. There was nothing of interest for us to investigate in the city of Gorgias, the sophist and orator, whose silver tongue, combined with a bold and transparent trick of the Segestans, duped the Athenians, who thought themselves the wisest of men, into the Sicilian expedition. We were accordingly glad to speed along to Priolo, a station between the ruins of Megara and the flat peninsula, Thapsos. Just beyond the latter, having ridden long enough to get up steam, we washed away our ills for that day with the hill of Syracuse looking down upon us, and then as renewed men passed, when the sun was approaching the horizon, over that historic hill, and looked down on the historic harbor and on little Ortygia, large enough to hold the modern city as it held the first Corinthian colony. What a tide of associations rush over one at this sight! In a sense we were at our goal. Had we closed our journey with that nightfall we should at least have read our Thucydides for the future with different eyes. In an exaltation of spirit we came to the Casa Politi, almost at the point of Ortygia, looking out upon the sea, where we found a German host and hostess. After our strenuous and partially successful wrestling with Italian, which had generally ended by our falling back on the member who had taken Italian at Harvard to straighten out for us the tangled web of the dialogue, how welcome it was when we asked the question, "_Haben Sie vielleicht gutes Bier?_" to get straight from the shoulder the honest answer, "_Jawohl, gewiss_," and the more tangible answer of three foaming mugs from a cool cellar. We had lived in the spirit a good deal that day, enjoying the beauty of Taormina, Ætna, and Syracuse, and holding converse with Alcibiades and Gorgias and Thucydides. Now we hobnobbed with Gambrinus, and enjoyed "the warmest welcome in an inn."