Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-08-25
THE MODERN GREEKS.
Gossip About the Busiest and Braini-
est Nation of the Orient.
THE IMPROVEMENTS IN GREECE.
How the Athenians Boom Their Political
Candidates.
BUCKSHOT BALLOTS CAST ON SUNDAY

IRON OUR TRAVELLING CoMAussIONER.l
ATHENS, August 5.-The Athens of to-
day is city of the nineteenth century. Its
buildings are the two and three story houses
of brick and stucco which you find in towns
of France and Italy. They are rooted with
with red tiles and they are built in blocks
with all the regularity of modern civiliza-
tion. The streets are paved with cobbles
and the sidewalks are tagged with blocks
of stone. The stores are of the same descrip-
tion as those of any American city, and
their plate glass windows show stocks of
goods which will compare fayorably with
those of Washington or Denver. The streets
cross each other at right angles and street
car tracks run through the busiest of them.
You can ride in the Athenian tramwav for
8 and cent fares over the same ground
which Alcibiades dashed in his seven-horse
chariots, and the steam whistles of the loco
motives which draw trains along the rail-
roads to the Pireus and Corinth, reverberate
against the time colored marble pillars of
the Parthenon, which, standing on the
mighty Acropolis, still looks over the city
as in the days when Pericles had his golden
rule. nearly $500 years ago.
1t is the oldest of the old looking at the
newest of the new. Modern Athens has
been built within so years. At the time of
the Greek independence IN 1884, it was a
dirty village of 300 miserable houses. By
a census, which has just been completed, it
has now $4,000 people, and it has nearly
doubled its population within the past ten
years. The Greeks themselves look upon
their country as that of a nation reborn and
upon Athens as city, rising Phoenix like
to brighter and better existence from the
dusty ashes of its past.
NATURE STILL THE SAME.
The Athens of to-day lies partly on and
partly off the site of the ancient city. 1t is
on the edge of plain with the hill of the
Acropolis rising upward sheer 200 feet at
its back, and with the low mountain of
Hymettus at one side. Near this are other
mountains, and away to one side across the
plain are the blue waters of the Mediterra-
mean Sea. From the Acropolis you can see
the plains of Marathon, on which the great
battle wasl fought-where the Greeks, under
Maltiades, defeated the Persians, and awav
to the west are the blue waters of the Bav of
Salamis, where Xerxes, the Persian King,
watched the destruction of his thousand war
vessels by the Grecian fleets. At the side of
the Acropolis is a rocky hill about 100
feet high, and more of a cliff than
a hill, on which st. Paul preached
and on which the court of Areopagus was
held, to which the old Athenians passed
sentences of life and death, and where
Demosthenes was tried for bribery and con-
victed. Every surrounding is historic and
classic, and the sky, the hills and the sea
are the same. The heavens are to-day as
wonderfully blue as they were in the DAYS
of Homer. The poppy flowers mixed with the
wheat are of as blood a red as they were
when Plato sat among them and talked
philosophy, and the dark hemlock on the
hills Is as green as when it furnished the
poison which killed Socrates. Mount Hy-
mettus, with its rocky silver gray sides,
furnishes as sweet honey TODAY as when the
Grecian poets sung its praises, and from the
quarries on Mount Pentelikos over there
comes for the new public buildings of Ath-
ems as pure white marble as that with which
Phidias worked and out of which Praxitiles
Clipped his famous statues.
METHODS OF GREEK MERCHANTS.
1t is only in respect to its natural sur
roundings that Athens remains as it was in
the past. Its buildings have all the fresh
greenness of the nineteenth century and it is
a town of hotels, theaters and newspapers.
1t is business town, too, and the modern
Greeks are among the brightest business
men of the East. The storekeepers have no
fixed prices and you bargain for everything
you buy. The rule is to offer not more than
one-third of what is asked, and you must
bargain with your butcher, your tailor, and
with even your druggist A lacy of Athens
was describing to me last night the purchase
of her last spring bonnet. Said she: IT
went into the leading millinery shop of the
place and picked out a well-trimmed piece
Of lace and straw and asked the price,"
''It will be 100 francs" was the reply.
"Oh," said 1, "but / can't pay so much.
think 80 francs is enough for it and will
give no more"
The merchant looked at me and said at
once that it was impossible, then seeing that
was about to leave, he said: "Well,
madame, if you think so francs is enough
you may have it for that" And, concluded
the lady, who is Greek, sit is so all over
Athens. You must never pay what the peo-
pie ask you. Then you will see in some of
the stores prices marked on the goods and
the notice hung up that there are none but
fixed prices at such places. But this is a
fraud. You must tell them you cannot pay
so much and you will get the goods for
less"
I have tried this plan during the past few
DAYS and 1 find can get considerable re-
duction, even in sedlitz powders and qui-
nine.
THE POLITICAL CENTER.
Athens is the capital of Greece and it is,
of course, the political center OF the country.
1t is here that the King lives, and it is here
that the Chamber of Deputies meets and
settles the destinies of the nation. But first
let me tell ycu something about the Greece
of 1889. 1t is not, you know, divided up
now as it was in the past into dozen differ
ent governments. 1t was consolidated under
the Mohammedans. By the war of half
century and more ago it was freed from the
domination of the Turks and it was given a
king by the leading governments of Europe.
This king was Otto, of Bavaria, and he
ruled until 1862 when he was expelled and
Great Britain, France and Russia chose the
present King, who is the son of the King of
Denmark. The Greeks pride themselves on
their democracy and they say they believe
so much in equality that they prefer to have
a foreigner rule over them.
Their country is, all told, only as large as
West Virginia, or half the size of the State
of New York, and they number only about
1000. 900 people. Each one of the male sex
among these 1000, 900 thinks himself a
statesman, and as soon as he is old enough
to speak begins to talk politics, and there is
no political center in the world perhaps, ex-
cept Washington, in which politics is more
talked than in Athens. The chief subject is
the actions of the Chamber of Deputies,
which is the Greek Parliament, and the
effect which these actions will have on the
governments of Europe. The modern Greek
imagines that everything that Boulanger,
Bismarck or Gladstone does is more or less
connected with Greece, and, like one OF our