The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-04-30
F. Hopkinson Smith in scribner's Maga

F. tdopKlnSon Sfhitn III ocrlphei H"oSe
 zine.
 4 HERE is only one way of reaching (0 Athens-that is, if you start from Venice. Trieste first, either by rail or boat, and then aboard one of the Austrian IIloyds and so on down the Ad- riatic to Patras.
 It is October. remember-when every spear of grass from a six-months' drought the customary dry spell-is burnt to a crisp. It will rain tomorrow, or next week. they will tell yous-but 1t doesn't- never has in October-and never will. Strange to say, you never miss it-neither in the color of the mountains fiankfng the Adriatic nor in any one of the ports on the way down, or in Patras Itself. The green note to which I have been accustomed which have 1abored over all my life-is lacking, and new palette takes its place of mauve, violet, indescribable blues and evanescent soap-bubble reds. The slopes of the hills are mother-of-pearl, their tops melting into cloud shadows so delicate in tone that you cannot distinguish where one leaves off and the other begins.
 And it is so in Patras, except for a riotous. defiant pine-green as spring cabbage or newly painted shutter-that sucks it's moisture from nobody knows where-hasnt any perhaps, and glories in Its shame. All along the railroad from the harbor of Patras to the outskirts Of Athens 1t Is the same-bare fields, bare hills, streets and roads choked with dust. And so, too, when you arrive at the sta ton and take the omnibus for the Grande Bretagne
 By this time you are accustomed to it. in fact you rather enjoy it. If you have doubt of 1t step out on the balcony at the front of the hotel and look up! Hanging in the sky-in an air of pure ether, set in films of silver grays in which shin mer millions of tones, delicate as the shadings of pearl, towers the Acropols'
 it's crest fringed by the ruins of the great est temples the world possesses. I rang a bell.
 Get me a carriage and send me up guide-anybody who can speak English
 and who Is big enough to carry sketch trap"
 He must have been outside, so quickly did he answer the call. He was two- thirds the size of William, one-half the length of Luigi and one-third the age of Bob.
 ,snat Is your name?'
 "vlanopoulos."
 Anything else?"
 "Yes-Panis."
 "Then we'll drop the last half. Put those traps in the carriage-and take me to
 the Parthenon."
 | I never left it for IA consecutive days
 nor did I see square inch of Atbens l other than the streets 1 drove through l up and back on my way to work | It was then that I blessed the dust. | Green things, wet things, soggy things l such as mud and dull skies have no place
 in the scheme of the Parthenon and its | contiguous temples and ruins. That won derful tea-rose marble, with its stains or burnt sienna marking the fittings or end l less broken columns needs no varnisnlns | of moisture to enhance it's beauty. Inat 1 will do for the facade of Burlington 1 house with it's grimy gray statues or the
 moss-encrusted tower of the Groote hirk' l but never here. It was this 1ear' per- haps. that kept me at work, haunted as l
 was by the bogy of Rain tomorrow. It always comes, and keeps on for month | wban if starts in" Blessed be the wealth. l CT clerk! It never started in-net until I | reached Brindsi on my way back to | Paris; then, if I remember, there was some falling weather-at the rate of two inches an hour.
 I might as well confess that my two weeks study of the Metropolis, beginning at the recently, uncovered entrance gate