The Cruise of the Branwen

THE WREATH OF OLIVE on the other. It was the most animated picture of national enthusiasm for athletics I had ever seen, for the enormous stadium usually held a crowd of over thirty thousand, and the whole of Athens was crammed with enthusiastic spectators of every country, East and West, the New World and the Old, with a great confusion of tongues only surmounted by the general good humour. Carriages, all with a pair of good, small horses, kept driving with great uproar through the thronged and dusty streets. Above it all, in the clear air, shone the ancient monu– ments of the immortal past, aloof from the noisy multitude of the material present, in which for the time we were most of us too ardently in– volved to be able to think of the artistic treasures so near at hand and yet so far from us. On the Friday Seligman added still further to his reputation by getting into a semi-final pool for the individual epee competition; Lord Howard de Walden also showed very pretty form in an assault at sabres at the club before the Queen of Greece, and as he won the Craven Stakes at Newmarket in the same week, he must have created a record which will be diffi– cult to beat. But this practically closed our fencing for the visit, and we determined to see all that was possible both of Athens and of the other sports. I will conclude the story of these latter first. Saturday and Sunday, April 28 and 29, were chiefly devoted to social entertainments of various kinds. One day we dined at the British Legation; 79