charges his own race with a lack of industry and love of idling too much in the coffee-houses, although it is an indictment which has never struck me as just, and one which, if coming from a foreigner, would doubtless be resented. It is true that the coffeehouses are seldom deserted, and the possession of an extra drachma or two is generally enough to tempt one to abandon his employ for the seclusion that the kaffeneion grants, there to sip slowly until the cups of syrupy coffee which the money will buy are gone. Nevertheless, one should be slow to say that the race is indolent by nature, especially in view of its climatic surroundings; for there are too many thousand thrifty and hard-working Hellenes in Greece and in America as well to refute any such accusation. The one vast trouble, no doubt, is the lack of any spur to industrial ambition at home, or of any very attractive or remunerative employment compared with the opportunities offered by the cities of the newer world. The strong set of the tide of emigration to American shores has tended largely to depopulate Greece; but it is not unlikely that the return of the natives, which is by no means uncommon, will in time work large benefit to Hellas herself, and the attraction of her sons to foreign lands thus prove a blessing rather than, as was once supposed, a curse.
This, however, is rather aside from any consideration of the modern city of Athens. Let it be said at the outset that one may go freely anywhere in the city and be quite unmolested either by malicious or mendicant persons. It is not improbable, of course, that the increasing inundation of Athens by foreign visitors will tend somewhat to increase the tendency to begging, as it has elsewhere; but it is due the Greek race to say that it is infinitely less lazy and infinitely less inclined to proletarianism, or to seeking to live without work, than the Italian. Small children, as in all countries, will be found occasionally begging a penny, especially if they have gone out of their way to render a fancied service, by ostentatiously opening a gate that already stood ajar. But there are few of the lame, halt, and blind, such as infest Naples and many smaller Mediterranean cities, seeking to extort money from sheer pity of unsightliness. Here and there in Athens one may indeed see a cripple patiently awaiting alms, but generally in a quiet and unobtrusive way. Neither is the visitor bothered by the importunities of carriage drivers, although the carriages are numerous enough and anxious for fares—a contrast that is welcome indeed to one newly come from Italy and fresh from the tireless pursuit of warring Neapolitan cabbies. The offset to this welcome peace is the fact that carriage fares in Athens are undoubtedly high compared with the astonishingly low charges produced in Naples by active and incessant competition of the vetturini. The sole dangers of Athenian streets are those incident to the fast driving of carriages over the unpaved roadways; for the pedestrian has his own way to make and his own safety to guard, as is largely true in Paris, and it is incumbent on him to stop, look, and listen before venturing into the highway.
The street venders of laces, sponges, flowers, and postal cards are perhaps the nearest to an importunate class, though they generally await invitation to the attack, and their efforts are invariably good-humored. The region of the “Syntagma” square is generally full of them, lining the curb and laden with their wares. Men will be seen with long strips of fascinating island lace over their shoulders, baskets on baskets of flowers, heaps of curiously shaped, marvelously attractive sponges, fresh and white from the near-by ocean, or packets of well-executed postal cards picturing the city’s classic remains, all offered for sale to whomsoever will exhibit the faintest trace of interest. Needless to say, the initial prices asked are inevitably excessive and yield to treatment with surprising revelations of latitude.
Athens is a clean city. Its streets, while unpaved, are still fairly hard. Its buildings are in the main of stone, covered with a stucco finish and given a white color, or a tint of buff or light blue. The prevailing tone is white, and in the glare of the brilliant sun it is often rather trying to the eyes. To relieve the whiteness there is always the feathery green of the pepper trees, and the contrast of the clambering vines and flowers that in their season go far to make the city so attractive. Most notable of all the contrasts in color is unquestionably the rich purple of the bougainvillea blooms splashed in great masses against the immaculate walls and porticoes of the more pretentious houses. The gardens are numerous and run riot with roses, iris, and hundreds of other fragrant and lovely blossoms. The sidewalks are broad and smooth. It is an easy town in which to stroll about, for the distances are not great and the street scenes are interesting and frequently unusual to a high degree, while vistas are constantly opening to give momentary views of the towering Acropolis. It is not a hilly city, but rather built on rolling ground, the prevailing slope of which is toward the west, gently down from the pointed Lycabettus to the ancient course of the Cephissus, along which once spread the famous grove of Academe. The lack of a sufficient water supply is unfortunate, for one misses the gushing of fountains which makes Rome so delightful, and the restricted volume available for domestic uses is sometimes far from pleasant.
The Athenians had a prodigious mine to draw upon for the naming of their streets, in the magnificent stretch of their history and in the fabulous wealth of mythology. And it is a fact worth remarking that the mythological gods and heroes appear to have decidedly the better of the famous mortals in the selection of street names to do them honor. For example, Pericles, the greatest Athenian in many ways, is recalled by the name of a decidedly poor thoroughfare—hardly more than an alley; while Pheidias, Pindar, Homer, Solon, and a score of others fare but little better. On the contrary, the great gods of high Olympus, Hermes, Athena, Æolus, and others, give their names to the finest, broadest, most magnificent streets of this city that likes to call herself a little Paris. The result of it all is a curious mental state, for by the time one gets out of Athens and into the highlands of Delphi or of the Peloponnesus, where every peak and vale is the scene of some godlike encounter or amour, one is more than half ready to accept those ancient deities as actually having lived and done the things that legend ascribes to them. They become fully as real to the mind as William Tell or Pocahontas. The same illusion is helped on by the classic names affected for the engines of the Piræus-Athens-Peloponnesus Railroad, and by the time one has ridden for a day behind the “Hermes” or the “Hephaistos,” one is quite ready to expect to see Proteus rising from the sea, or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
It is at first a trifle perplexing to one not versed in the Greek language to find the streets all labeled in the genitive case, such as ὁδὸς Ἑρμοῦ (othòs Ermoù), “street of Hermes.” This soon becomes a matter of course, however. The main shopping district is confined to the greater highways of Hermes, Æolus, and Athena, and to Stadium Street—the latter so called because its length is about one kilometre, which is the modern “stadion,” instead of the lesser classic length of approximately six hundred feet. The name therefore has no reference to the magnificent athletic field of the city, in which the so-called modern “Olympic” games are occasionally held, and which in itself is a fine sight to see, as it lies in its natural amphitheatre east of the city, and brilliant in its newly built surfaces of purest marble. Stadium Street is perhaps the most modern and up-to-date street in Athens, lined with handsome stores, hotels, and cafés, thronged day and night, and perhaps even more gay and Parisian-looking by night, with its many lights and teeming life.
Athens at this writing has no system of trolley cars, but sticks obstinately to an old-fashioned and quite inadequate horse-railway, the several lines radiating from the Omonoia Square—pronounced much like "Ammonia"—which, being interpreted, means the same as Place de la Concorde. To master the intricacies of this tramway system requires a considerable acquaintance with Athens, but it is vastly less involved a problem than the omnibuses of London and Paris, and naturally so because of the smaller size of the town. Odd little carriages plying between stated points eke out the local transportation service, while the third-rail, semi-underground line to the Piræus and the antiquated steam tram to New Phalerum give a suburban service that is not to be despised. In a very few years no doubt the trolley will invade Athens, for it already has a foothold in Greece at the thriving port of Patras; and when it does, one may whirl incongruously about the classic regions of the Acropolis as one now whirls about the Forum at Rome.
The admirable Bædeker warns visitors to Hellas against assuming too hastily that Greece is a tropical land, merely because it is a southern Mediterranean country, and our own experiences
