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I fancy that, on the memorable morning when Aladdin’s Palace was set down in Africa after its magic night’s ride from the Chinese capital, a housemaid must have gone to the window, thrown back the hangings and looked out, astounded, on the barren mountains, when she expected to see only the courtyard of the palace and its swarm of Chinese life. She then recalled that the building rocked gently in the night, and that she heard a whirling sound as of wind. These were the only evidences of the devil-guided flight. Now she looked on a new world, and the familiar pagodas lay far to the east within the eye of the rising sun.

There are summer evenings in my recollection when I have traveled the skies, landing from the sky’s blue sea upon the cloud continent, and traversing its mountain ranges, its inland lakes, harbors and valleys. Over the wind-swept ridges I have gone, watching the world-change, seeing

the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the Kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store.

The greatest traveler that I know is a little man, slightly bent, who walks with a stick in his garden or sits passive in his library. Other friends have boasted of travels in the Orient, of mornings spent on the Athenian Acropolis, of visiting the Theatre of Dionysius, and of hallooing to the empty seats that re-echoed. They warn me of this and that hotel, and advise me concerning the journey from London. The usual tale of travelers is that Athens is a ruin. I have heard it rumored, for instance, that the Parthenon marbles are in London, and that the Parthenon itself has suffered from the “wreckful siege of battering days”; that the walls to Piraeus contain hardly one stone left upon another.

And this sets me to thinking, for my friend denies all this with such an air of sincerity that I am almost inclined to believe his word against all the others. The Athens he pictures is not ruinous. The Parthenon stands before him as it left the hand of Phidias. The walls to Piraeus stand high as on that morning, now almost forgotten, when Athens awaited the Spartan attack. For him the Dionysian Theatre does not echo to tourists’ shouts, but gives forth the sounds of many-voiced Greek life. He knows, too, the people of Athens. He walked one day with Socrates along the banks of the Ilissus, and afterwards visited him in his prison when about to drink the hemlock. It is of the grandeur of Athens and her sons that he speaks, not of her ruins. The best of his travels is that he buys no tickets of Cook, nor, indeed, of any one, and when he has seen the cities’ sights, his wife enters and says, “Isn’t it time for the bookworm to eat?” So he has his American supper in the next room overlooking Attica, so to speak.