THE MODERN GREEK 403 



stumble would be far from a luxury, with the freight all 

 in the bows, to speak nautically. 



The Greek dress, until you get used to it, is too lady- 

 like to be pleasing. The close-falling kilt of Scotland is 

 natural enough. But as in Greece the kilt is made in 

 such ample folds, and starched to so stiff an extent that it 

 stands out absolutely like a ballet-girl's skirt, one never 

 quite gets rid of a certain flavor of hermaphroditism, so to 

 speak, until one has long been among the people. It is 

 bad enough when the Greek wears the picturesque Thessa- 

 lian leggings; but when, as in Albania, he wears what 

 the old Rollo books used to call " pantelettes," one's ideas 

 are turned topsy-turvy, even more than in Tunis, where 

 one sees a pretty Jewess calmly parading up and down 

 the bazaars in tight trousers and short sack-coat, all 

 wonderfully wrought in gold embroidery. In either case, 

 unless your judgment is very firmly fixed, you have to 

 sit down and reflect for a moment, or pull yourself to- 

 gether in some other fashion. 



The Greek is a high-tuned fellow. Though the blood 

 of the modern Greek is rather Albanian — as also is his 

 dress — than traceable to the heroic Hellene of twenty cen- 

 turies ago, no prince of the blood can be more proud of 

 his lineage, which he deludes himself into believing to be 

 purity itself. The Greek peasant will strut by you with 

 the most kingly air ; he looks down with a kindly but ill- 

 disguised contempt upon the American tourist who could 

 buy up a whole village of his ilk and scarcely know he 

 owned it. He has many really fine qualities, this Greek, 

 coupled to some we are not wont to admire, such as in- 

 ordinate vanity. And in his wonderful garb on a hard- 

 trotting horse, so near the withers that he gets threefold 

 the motion he would get if he sat in the middle of the 

 back, he is truly a spectacle for gods and men. 



