“ Demeter’s Well-Beloved Children ” THE designs upon the cover of this book, and at the heads of the chapters, are the tribe signs or totems of the original inhabitants of the island of Sicily, which have survived all conquests and races and are still considered as tokens of good luck and defenders from the Evil-eye....

When this book was written—in the spring of the year—the Land of the Older Gods was unmarred by the terrible seismic convulsions which wrought such ruin in the last days of 1908. Very sad to each of us it is when time and the sorrows of “this unintelligible world” carve furrows upon our own countenances, but when the visage of the globe shrivels and wrinkles with the lapse of ages then the greatness of the disaster touches the whole race. Sicily, whose history is so full of blood and tears, has

“ Oh , Persephone, Persephone!... Surely Koré is in Hell.” This is a discouraged voice from the window. “Peripatetica, that sounds both insane and improper. Would it fatigue you too much to explain in the vernacular what you are trying, in your roundabout way, to suggest?” Thus Jane, a mere diaphanous mauve cloud, from which the glimmering fire picked out glittering points here and there. When Jane takes to teagowns she is really very dressy. Peripatetica strolled up and down the dusky drawing-r

Trustfully and sleepily Jane and Peripatetica, in the icy starlight of La Cava, boarded the express of European de Luxe . Drowsy with the long day’s rush through the wind, they believed that the train’s clatter would be a mere lullaby to dreams of golden temples and iris seas and “the glory that was Greece.” No robbers or barbarians nearer than defunct corsairs crossed their imaginings; the hoodoo had faded from mind, shaken off by the glorious swoop of Berliet, and they supposed it left behind

Sir John Lubbock tells a story—and this story teaches an obvious lesson—of certain red warrior ants, who capture black fellow pismires, and hold them as slaves; an outrage which must certainly shock all true pismitarian ants. The captors become in time so dependent upon their negro servants that, when deprived of their attendants, they are unable to feed or clean themselves, and lie helplessly upon their backs, feebly waving their paws in the air!... Peripatetica, having but recently suffered th

No doubt the usual things that happen to travellers happened to Jane and Peripatetica at Enna-Castrogiovanni, and on their way to it. Things annoying and amusing, tiresome or delightful, but they have no memory of these things, all lesser matters having been swallowed up in the final satisfaction of their quest. Memory is an artist who works in mosaic, and all the fantastic jumble and contrast of the experiences of travel she heaps pell-mell together in her bag. Bits of sights but half seen, but

They were running swiftly through the dark. On either hand was a dim and gloomy land of bare, shrivelled peaks, grey cinder heaps, and sulphurous smells. Intermittently visible by the strange subterranean glowings rose black, glowering mountains in the background, and nearer at hand were shadowy shapes of men and asses bringing sulphur from the mines. Within, the garlic-reeking tongue of a flickering gas-lamp vaguely illumined the dusk of the railway carriage. “This is Pluto’s own realm,” declar

When Ulysses Grant had ended the Civil War in America and was made President, he turned from uttering his solemn oath of office before the cheering multitudes and said under his breath to his wife who stood beside him, in that tone of half-resentful, half-weary patience the American husband usually adopts in speaking to his mate, “Well, now, Julia, I hope you’re satisfied!” There was the same exasperated patience in Jane’s voice as she climbed into the railway carriage for Palermo and, throwing