Granted that one wishes to see the country and to become familiar with it, so that he will read Greek history, and Greek poetry, too, with other eyes, the bicycle becomes evidently indispensable. To take an example: One morning, to shake off a headache incurred by sitting too long in a close room at an invaluable meeting of the German School the night before, I bicycled with a member of our school, who had never been there before, to Liopesi (Pæania), the birthplace of Demosthenes, stayed long enough to chat with the villagers and take a glass of their resined wine, with which one is supposed to drink in the gift of talking modern Greek, and came back to Athens, all in three hours, taking it very leisurely at that, and returning by a roundabout way, reached home full of oxygen and _sans_ headache. We might have walked, to be sure, but not to Pæania, unless we had given the whole day to it. Railroads will take you already to many parts of Greece, and one can now proceed by rail from the northern border of Thessaly to Kalamata at the southern end of Messenia. But even railroads cannot do all for us that the bicycle does. Exercise, open air, and, perhaps more than all, the delight in propelling one's self, will make one prefer the wheel. We can reach Eleusis by bicycle as quickly as the train takes us, and choose our own time for starting, without the alternative of sitting some time at the station or losing the train. There are many other charming spots in Attica where no railroad comes in to help. Marathon and Salamis are two such places, to which we make excursions every year. One afternoon in May two of us started out from Athens at half-past two, proceeding aimlessly eastward against a rather pronounced wind. Suddenly the thought struck us that Marathon lay in front of us. A definite goal is always inspiring, and we struck a good gait for Marathon. We reached it before five o'clock, and after passing ten minutes on the top of the historic mound came back to Athens for dinner at quarter before eight. Last year some of us rode out on Thanksgiving Day through Dekeleia to a point where we saw Oropos and the Eubœan Gulf at our feet, and Dirphys, the highest mountain in Eubœa, rising opposite us, and then turned around with the recollection of one of the finest views in the world to add to enjoyment of our Thanksgiving dinner. In twenty minutes, had we so wished, we could have been in Oropos. On any day, one can start out from Athens and reach the end of Attica in any direction, and get home to an early dinner. In fact, we have sometimes taken dinner at home after straying as far as Megara and Thebes. The acquaintance which some members of our school have gained with Attica, in all its nooks and corners, by single day's bicycle-riding, is something noteworthy; and when, in 1897, on Thanksgiving Day, we turned out ten men for a ride across Salamis to Megara for a luncheon, and came home by the shore road, we felt considerable _esprit de corps_.