can for the well mannered foreigner. And, friend, when you go out, do not try to corrupt my boys with money,” was his parting admonition regarding tips for any of his pupils.

This picturesqueness of character extends to face and costume as well, and in the remoter places the dress and faces of the ancients may be observed, striking a curious note of contrast with the exceedingly modern and well appareled folk of the larger centers. Only fifteen miles by carriage from Palermo, back in the mountains at Piana dei Greci—an Albanian colony founded during the latter part of the fifteenth century—the peasants still hold during festival time to their rich and exceedingly beautiful costumes of embroidered silken gowns and breeches heavily picked out with gold. And a costume wedding can usually be arranged for the benefit of the interested visitor, who is expected to pay the officiating priest and make a modest gift to the newly married young couple.

But ancient or modern though the costume be, the demeanor of the wearer is almost invariably the same, courteous and respectful—one might even say eager—to give nothing but pleasure to the stranger. And this is true even of the cab-drivers. We had come to Sicily weary to exasperation of the importunities and rascality of the Neapolitan jehus—Gregorio was a smiling exception. To our delight we found ourselves able to take a ride in Palermo, of half a mile or more, in a clean, well-kept barouche, drawn by a well-fed little Arab stallion, for ten cents—and no tip necessary or expected.

The prices for longer excursions were on the same basis, and for weeks we had the services of a cab, a magnificent horse, and the peerless Gualterio, for about two dollars a day, including what to the Sicilian mind was a generous gratuity. And the carriage “ran sweetly,” as Gualterio assured us it would; nor was it—in his own words—“dirty, like some!” Of course, the Sicilian cabman, for all his courtly manners and engaging smile, his soft voice and his continual appeal to the ladies, with the set phrase “La Signora vuol’ andare—The Lady would like to ride?” (as she usually did, to the enrichment of the cabby) is not much more to be relied upon for facts, or as a guide, than his brethren in Naples or anywhere else in the world. The first time we saw one of the numberless slender stone towers that dot Palermo from end to end, rising to a height of about twenty feet, covered with fine vines and dripping countless tiny streams of water, Gualterio smiled angelically when asked what it was.

“It is very simple, Signore,” he replied instantly. “It is one of the watch towers, built to enable the guards of the royal Château of La Favorita to keep watch over the entire estate at once.” It seemed a curious thing that royal guards should combine duty with the pleasures of a cooling showerbath; but when I appeared to doubt it, Gualterio simply pointed at the iron ladder leading from top to bottom outside. “Behold,” he said. “Are not the ladders still there by which the guards climbed up and down?” Later we found the structures to be irrigating towers, as useful as they are picturesque, which is saying a good deal. How to make a cab-driver truthful is a recipe one seldom or never learns. Perhaps there is a way, but his fictions are so harmless and amiable, so entirely diverting and ingenuous, that it seems a pity to spoil a child of Nature with ironclad rules for veracity.

Nor is the cabman the only Sicilian given to hyperbole or metaphor. The tendency is marked in all primitive peoples—a large part of the Sicilians are still primitive—to tell an inquirer the thing they suppose he most wishes to know; and the Saracenic blood in the Sicilian has doubtless left him a certain heritage of poetic imagination and exaggeration for the most utter commonplaces of life. At any rate, this inclination is found throughout the island, and it does not, except to the flustered tourist-in-a-hurry, seem a peculiar drawback or fault. Indeed, it rather adds to the fascination of the people, who appear to fit perfectly into their environs. Wild looking young girls, cherry-and-olive of skin, gossiping about the central fountains of their home towns, bear huge replicas of red Greek amphorai upon their well poised heads with all the grace of Greek maidens. Sprightly little goatherds, whose heads are the heads of fauns, and whose half naked and ruddy bodies are often clad in skins, ramble over the precipitous hills with nimble herds able to crop a living from mere stone-piles; and the fauns, Pan-like, pipe to their goats strains Theocritus might have loved. Swart mountaineers dress like their own rough hills in shaggy clothes topped off by big rough shawls; and seamen clump about, afloat and ashore, in boots and “oilers,” or barelegged. The city folk are equally artless, with their tiny marionette theaters, their homeless meals in the open air markets, their goat-blessings, their innumerable other feste.

And the Sicilians are not the only entertaining characters one meets. Sometimes our own countrymen—more often countrywomen!—are not far behind them. At a little mountain hotel, one evening at dinner a vivacious, black-haired, sloe-eyed, young woman with the air of one who comes, sees and conquers, told me in a breath her name, place of residence, father’s occupation, and asked for my credentials. I was rather stunned, but one of her companions—there were five of them in all—reassuring me by “Oh, don’t mind Dulcie! She’s all right,” I admitted my identity.

With characteristic American energy the trippers “did” the town in one day, and long before we were ready for breakfast the next morning, drove away in an ancient barouche crammed to the guards with luggage, and drawn by three horses so rickety we wondered at the daring of the five women in accepting it. Dulcinea—have I her name right?—perched beside the grinning driver, her agile hands full of guidebooks, umbrellas and so on, gesturing with the fluency of Sicilian temperament itself, took in everything with a last comprehensive glance, and commanded the triumphal equipage to move. The hotel manager stood by the door blinking and dazed. Drawing a hand across his brow as the chatter died away in the distance, his lips moved in something that doubtless was a tribute to the “wonderful Americans!”

In another dining room a weighty German, seating himself ponderously, drew from his pocket a sort of dog-chain which he carefully threw around his neck and attached by a spring clasp at either end to his napkin, spread carefully under his expansive chin. By the way, many Germans travel in Sicily; they seem especially interested in its classical history. The caretaker in one of the latomie in Syracuse complained: “Most of the people who have been here this year were Germans. Me, I do not like the Germans. They have no pockets! Now Americans are grand. They are all pockets.” After we left he may have concluded that some Americans are very German. There are many English, too, for they are everywhere; sometimes interesting, sometimes not.

Besides these folk of to-day, legend and fable have peopled the island with myriad nymphs and goddesses, gods and dæmons and heroes, equally interesting. Here in the smoldering caverns of Ætna dwell the grim Sikel gods of fire. There in the lofty central plateau is the very pool beside which Proserpina was weaving her daisy chain when stolen by Pluto and carried away to be queen of the nether world. High on the peak of an ancient western hill is the dueling ground where Hercules wrestled with King Eryx. And off the eastern shore are the very rocks the Cyclops Polyphemus hurled in his impotent rage at the escaping Odysseus.

But song and story are not necessary to invest the natural scenery with its full share of beauty and importance. The Sicilian Apennines, like forked lightning, zig-zag sharply down