"You see," my father replied, very seriously, "you are not eight yet, and I do not believe in early marriages; so you have twelve years before you are married and thirteen before you have a son. During those years there are a lot of nice and funny things to think about—and, above all, you must grow strong physically."
I must say I was quite disappointed at the way he took things. I was quite miserable about it, and might have become morbid—for I liked to cling to the big dreams of the future—had it not been for my half-brother. He was fourteen years older than I, and he, too, like my uncle lived in the past. His past, however, went beyond my uncle's past; and from him I was to learn, not of the woes of Greece, but of the glory of Greece, of her golden age, and of the time when she, Queen of the World, was first in civilization.
My horizon was gilded also by the Greek mythology—that wonderful Greek mythology, which to my brother was living, not dead. He spoke one day in such a way of Olympus that I exclaimed:
"You talk as if Olympus really existed, and were not only mythology."
"Of course, it exists," he replied. "I used to live there myself, until they punished me by sending me down here. I cannot tell you all the particulars, because, when Zeus is about to exile one, one is given a potion which puts him to
