And finally came a dismal day, at the end of which the west was lined with long streaks of red, and, just before sunset, through a lengthened break in the gray, I seemed to see an Island in the far Ægean. I think it must have been somewhere between the Ægina that looks across the waters to the Athenian Acropolis and the Assos which my friends in their youth dug from its grave. Let us call it Æginassos. Its buildings as I dimly saw them are in a remarkable condition of preservation. The white temple stood out on a promontory over the sea, and brought back to memory the temple-crowned headland at Sunium. Higher on the mountain-side was the Forum with its terraces and long colonnades. Steep and winding paths descended to the ancient port, and far across the water rose the heights of the Isles of Greece.
Here are the records of what I was privileged to see from the roof terrace of the Hospital. Made in bed or wheel chair and depending on the passing imagination of an invalid, the sketches are of necessity crude. Would that instead they were like the work of Claude or Turner, who were the great experts at seeing visions in the clouds and in transferring them to their paper! These drawings will, however, be a reminder that idle hours can be passed happily even during a long captivity! Opposite each drawing I have placed some quotations from various writers. Although these do not describe with exactness the places which no eye but mine has seen, yet they do picture others very like those which I saw from the hospital terrace.
A day at last arrived when the patient was suddenly released. After being the object of tender care for many weeks the outer world seemed very large and very hustling. It was with a certain timidity and almost with reluctance that facing it all he left the peaceful quiet of the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
"So shall the drudge in dusty frock Spy behind the city clock Retinues of airy things Troops of angels, starry wings, His fathers shining in bright fables His children fed at heavenly tables." OCTOBER 1915]
IT was one of their happy mornings. They trotted along and sat down together, with no thought that life would ever change much for them; they would only get bigger and not go to school, and it would be always like the holiday; they would always live together and be fond of each other. And the mill with its booming--the great chestnut tree under which they played at house--their own little river, the Ripple, where the banks seemed like home, and Tom was always seeing water-rats while Maggie gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds which she forgot, and dropped afterwards--above all, the great Floss, along which they wandered with a sense of travel, to see the rushing spring-tide, the awful Eagre, come up like a hungry monster, or to see the Great Ash which had once wailed and groaned like a man--these things would always be just the same to them. Tom thought people were at a disadvantage who lived in any other spot of the globe; and Maggie when she read about Christiana passing "the river over which there is no bridge," always saw the Floss between the green pastures by the Great Ash.